“Just think,” I had whispered in the moment of seeing a shooting star sprinting across the darkness of our night sky, “Job tells us that when God created the world, the stars all sang. Can you imagine it? Stars singing? You can almost hear singing as you look up now into the night sky! And then in response, the angels shouted with joy, probably a lot like a crowd cheering enthusiastically at a ball game. It must have been quite the celebration.”

Sarah’s soft voice emerged from her hiddenness. “David wrote that the heavens are declaring the glory of God,” she remembered aloud.

“Mama,” quipped Joy innocently, “I want to ask God what it was like when He painted the stars gold, silver, and blue and how He decided on those colors. I want to tell Him I love what He made!” And then she snuggled closer to me and sighed with a release of the adrenaline she had carried through her little-girl day.

“I wish I could harness a shooting star and ride through the heavens,” Nathan pronounced.
My imagination, alive with thoughts swirling, started working on ideas popping into my own mind for the next morning. Light, space, infinitude of the stars, galaxies, constellations; “Let there be light.”

Joel suggested, “I want to read about stars tomorrow.”
“I want to draw us all lying here with the mountains and trees and Milky Way all around us,” said Nathan, our relational prince.

Over the next few days, we read a book about constellations, and Joel found a video online that showed the extent of our galaxy. Nathan borrowed a telescope from a friend. Researching the Milky Way, stars, and constellations filled hours of our days. We found a book that explained and displayed the major planets, the solar system, nebulas. At our dinner table, the older three spoke with excitement and reported what they had learned while Joy colored her own picture of the night sky.

This led to that, and Galileo, Copernicus, gravity, orbiting, black holes, and comets became subjects of research. Nightly dinner-table discussion from what Clay had found to read aloud combined with “Daddy, listen to what I learned today.” We memorized Psalm 19:1–6 and heartily agreed that the heavens were indeed declaring the glory of God and imagined David the shepherd crafting this from his own perch on a desert mountain while guarding sheep. Sarah and Joel composed a little poem, expressing their delight and thoughts about what had impressed them these weeks we spent in the company of the heavens.

Once again, as the summer came to an end, we returned to the beauty of our deck, the silence speaking to our hearts, and submitted to the breezes blowing, the sky dancing, and the sleep that eventually enveloped us all.

Awaking Wonder, for us, was often simply opening our eyes to the beauty around us, then diving into whatever that beauty caused us to wonder about!

Have you ever thought about learning like this? Read more about it in my newest book, Awaking Wonder!