There is a wild, wonderful world all around us. Mountains and trees, flowers and squirrels, beaches and birds. Creation is amazing.

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, observes,

“After a while we get used to it and quit noticing. We get narrowed down into something small and constricting. Somewhere along the way this exponential expansion of awareness, this wide-eyed looking around, this sheer untaught delight in what is here, reverses itself: the world contracts; we are reduced to a life of routine through which we sleepwalk.

But not for long. Something always shows up to jar us awake: a child’s question, a fox’s sleek beauty, a sharp pain, a pastor’s sermon, a fresh metaphor, an artist’s vision, a slap in the face, scent from a crushed violet. We are again awake, alert, in wonder: how did this happen? And why this? Why anything at all? Why not nothing at all?

Gratitude is our spontaneous response to all this: to life.”

How is your gratitude this week? How to recapture that awareness so you’re not sleepwalking through life?