By Steve Gatena.
You’re standing in the checkout line, phone in hand.
Half-reading an article, half-listening to a playlist you picked without thinking.
The day is ending, and nothing felt like enough.
That’s where most of us live now: efficient, connected, and quietly hollow.
Somewhere between childhood and now, you traded wonder for efficiency.
Kids don’t calculate the sky.
They just stop and stare at it.
But somewhere along the way, you stopped staring.
Mike Cosper puts a name to what you’re feeling.
He calls it disenchantment:
The slow erosion of awe in a world that rewards explanation over mystery.
The fix isn’t more information, but more attention.
Cosper argues that wonder isn’t something you stumble into passively.
Rather it’s built, slowly, through small daily acts of presence.
Waking up before the noise starts.
Sitting with silence instead of scrolling through it.
Praying before you perform.
You haven’t lost the capacity for wonder; you’ve just let other things crowd it out.
The discipline is clearing the space back out.
Tonight, step outside.
Leave your phone on the counter.
Look at the sky until you feel small in the best way.
Let that smallness do something in you.
Wonder isn’t weakness.
It’s the thing that keeps your faith from becoming just a system you manage.
When awe returns, so does the fire.
Here’s your focus for today:
• Reclaim the morning: Wake up ten minutes earlier and sit outside before you check anything.
• Name one wonder: Find one ordinary moment today and say out loud what makes it remarkable.
• Pray through the pressure: When stress rises this afternoon, pause and turn it into a one-sentence prayer before you react.
• Anchor your day in this truth: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” (Matthew 13:44)
You haven’t lost wonder.
You just buried it.
Go find it today.
