成人快手

Good morning. When on this day in 1957 the first man made satellite was launched, I vividly remember as a small boy standing for ages in our back-garden staring at the sky and eventually convincing myself that I鈥檇 seen it. It was very exciting. Suddenly the idea that humanity could get into some kind of contact with the rest of the universe became a reality.

The launch of Sputnik and the moon landings 12 years later both in a curious way make me nostalgic for a time when the world still had the capacity for wonder.聽

So often these days, the sheer amount of technology that many of us take for granted in our daily lives 鈥� in everything from medicine to shopping 鈥� seems to have blunted our sense of astonishment at what is going on around us.聽 聽

And it鈥檚 not just about technology.聽 The natural world is so full of extraordinary things that we often take for granted. Whether we believe in a creator or not there are amazing things all around us from landscapes to the smallest plants that we somehow don鈥檛 make time to enjoy.聽 Partly that鈥檚 of course because we have other urgent things to worry about.聽 But I also think that familiarity has robbed many of us of our sense of wonder.聽

The writer G K Chesterton once suggested that the lesson from the natural world may be that God takes a child-like joy in familiar things that we have lost.聽 鈥淔or we have sinned and grown old,鈥� he wrote 鈥渁nd our Father is younger than we.鈥�

And I suspect that we are the losers for that.聽 There鈥檚 a real joy to be had in rediscovering our sense of wonder and our ability to appreciate what we have rather than focussing exclusively on what鈥檚 new or what鈥檚 next.聽

Lord God, give us a child-like delight in the wonders of nature and of technology that reminds us of just how much we have to be grateful for.聽 Amen