| Psalms 8:9 – “O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!” |
What gives you joy?
That’s an interesting question because we don’t think about it. It is not deliberate because joy arises from life.
The best way to miss joy is to try to pursue it.
Ronan knows that.
Ronan is a 9-year-old boy. And you would expect him to be just like other children. But Ronan is autistic, and he doesn’t speak. He has been diagnosed as being non-verbal.
But that changed one time in 2020.
In March, his grandfather took him to a concert performed by the Haydn Society in Boston.
The orchestra had a full program. One of the pieces was Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music.
As the final note fell into silence, with the audience completely still, there came a voice from the audience…just one…and just one word. Wow.
The conductor was so overwhelmed, he wanted to find the voice. He emailed every member of the audience and found out it was this 9-year-old who did not speak who was so caught up by the music that he simply expressed, “Wow.”
Life needs the moments of wow, when we are overwhelmed with the wonder of the world.
Think about David who was not preoccupied by electronics and social media.
He may have slept in the dew of meadows, but he had the moments which gave him a sense of wow.
Listen to Psalm 8.
LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8, NIV)
Perhaps we need to stop and just watch life. It might give us something that makes us go “wow.”
Robert G. Taylor
robertgtaylor.com
