Dare to Wonder

Dare to Wonder

Daniel Schott. 8 October 2026.

He was in the car. Headphones on. A bottle in his hands. And he looked up.

I do not know what caught him. A light, a sign, something on a screen, something only a boy would notice. It does not matter for this. What mattered was his face. Attention, full and unguarded. Mouth a little open. Eyes up. Curiosity had him, and he was not performing it.

Gabriel is my youngest. I have watched six children learn the world, and I still get stopped by this. A father knows that look. It is the look that used to be mine, before I learned to keep my eyes on the next task.

I have started a small project with my profile pictures. If you have seen them, you have seen me looking up. Wonder. Ponder. And, when the noise drops, rest in fellowship with God. Gabriel did not assign me that project. He did not know he was preaching. He looked up, and a father noticed. That was enough to capture me.

A child and a man

It is quite different than a child. I want that said plainly, because the similarity is easy to romanticize.

Gabriel's look is the look of someone still being introduced to the world. Wonder, for him, is often discovery. What is that. Why is it there. Will it do it again. That is good. It is also incomplete. A child can look up and still be thinking only of the thing in front of him.

I am not trying to become a boy again. Jesus did not tell us to stay immature. He told us to be converted, and to humble ourselves as a little child.

"Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3 to 4, NKJV).

The likeness I want is the humility, not the ignorance. A child does not have a reputation to protect when he stares. A man does. I have spent years looking useful. Looking up is a small refusal of that. It says the next important thing is not in my own head.

"Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me. Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with his mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me" (Psalm 131:1 to 2, NKJV).

Lofty eyes are proud eyes. Lifted eyes are dependent eyes. Those are not the same direction, even when the chin is raised. A weaned child is quiet because he is with his mother, not because he has solved her. That is closer to fellowship than to a research project.

Stockholm, in the open

On a cobblestone quay in Stockholm, City Hall stands across the water, the tower crowned in gold against a hard blue sky. I stood there and looked up. Not at the tower, exactly. Past it. The sky was doing what sky does when you finally give it your face. It made the building small, which is a mercy. Beautiful things are still made things.

"When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?" (Psalm 8:3 to 4, NKJV).

The visit in that verse is care. God gives attention. He is mindful. That is the part a sky cannot say. A sky can humble you. Only the Lord who made it can attend to you.

"Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power; not one is missing" (Isaiah 40:26, NKJV).

I did not count the stars that afternoon. I did not need to. The invitation is to see the Maker, not to collect a better photograph of the made.

Oslo, beside the lion

In Oslo I stood under the stone lion at the Storting, the parliament building curved behind us, the Norwegian flag over the roof. The lion looks up too, in its own carved way. I was not competing with it. Stone does not fellowship. It only holds a pose.

People walked past. Ordinary afternoon. Looking up in a public square feels slightly foolish, which is part of the medicine. You are not the monument. You are the man who still needs direction.

"Unto You I lift up my eyes, O You who dwell in the heavens" (Psalm 123:1, NKJV).

That address matters. Not to the lion. Not to the building. Not to the flag on the roof. Unto You. The You has a name. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Fellowship that stops at awe of architecture is just taste.

The same posture, after dark

There is another frame from a night plaza. A darker lion, almost a shadow. A lit stone front. People standing with an Israeli flag. I looked up there too.

I am not turning that night into a speech. An Israeli flag is in the frame, held by people I do not know. I will not crop the people of Israel out of a picture as if the church had some quarrel with them. The church does not. A photograph is not a foreign policy either. What I will say is smaller. The posture held in the dark, with other people's stories in the background, the same way it held in the daylight. Wonder is not only for empty scenic overlooks. It is for the street you actually walked.

The mountain is not the help

On a mountain in Norway, autumn already in the birch, I looked up the rock and into the cloud streaks. Help feels like it ought to come from something that tall. The psalm knows the temptation.

"I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth" (Psalm 121:1 to 2, NKJV).

Read the question. The hills are not the answer. They are the place the eyes go when a man wants a source bigger than himself. The answer is the Lord who made the hills. If I treat the mountain as the help, I have only changed idols. Creation is a witness. It is not a savior.

That distinction is the whole difference between Gabriel and me, if I am being honest. He can be captured by the thing. I have to be captured by the One who made the thing, and who speaks.

The window, which is not a sky

Not every picture in this set is a chin pointed at weather. By a canal window, the houses across the water reading as Amsterdam, I sat with my hand at my chin. The shirt says TaboriX.AI. The necklace is a cross. The posture is ponder, not spectacle. The wonder is not toward the shirt.

Mary "kept all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:19, NKJV).

Pondering is not worry with a better vocabulary. It is holding what God has shown you until it becomes part of you. A window is a good place for that. So is a car seat at night. So is a kitchen in Grand Forks, which is where most of my real fellowship will have to happen after the trip is over.

"You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You" (Isaiah 26:3, NKJV).

"Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10, NKJV).

Rest is not the absence of a schedule. It is a mind stayed. Fellowship is not a mood I owe an audience.

"That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3, NKJV).

"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:4 to 5, NKJV).

Looking up is useless if I will not stay.

Wisdom, and the direction under it

I hope the pictures do one thing for you. Not that you copy a pose. That you look to God for wisdom and direction, and that you wonder.

"If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him" (James 1:5, NKJV).

Liberally, and without reproach. He does not sigh at the question. Ask.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths" (Proverbs 3:5 to 6, NKJV).

Direction is His. The pose does not earn it. Acknowledgment is not a technique. It is turning the day toward Him before I appoint myself the guide.

"Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know" (Jeremiah 33:3, NKJV).

The margin of that verse notes that mighty can be read as inaccessible. The promise is things you do not know, and cannot get to on your own. Wonder belongs there. Not as a brand. As the honest posture of a man who has stopped pretending the map is complete.

"If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth" (Colossians 3:1 to 2, NKJV).

Above is not a mood and not a mountain. Above is where Christ is.

"Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2, NKJV).

"One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple" (Psalm 27:4, NKJV).

Behold, and inquire. Wonder, and ask. That is a full life, and it is offered.

"When You said, 'Seek My face,' my heart said to You, 'Your face, Lord, I will seek'" (Psalm 27:8, NKJV).

"Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law" (Psalm 119:18, NKJV).

The wondrous things are in His word, not only in a fjord. If the photographs move you and the Scriptures do not, start with the Scriptures. They will outlast the trip.

"Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!" (Romans 11:33, NKJV).

Past finding out is not a reason to stop looking. It is the reason looking never becomes mastery. We fellowship with a God we will not finish. That is rest, if you will take it. It is exhaustion, if you need to be the one who knows.

What I am asking

Look up. Not as a performance, and not as a return to childhood. Look to the Lord. Ask for wisdom. Let Him direct the path. Ponder what He has already said. Be still long enough to know that He is God.

Gabriel looked up because something captured him. I am looking up because Someone has called me. Those are related. They are not the same. I hope the difference helps you, and I hope the likeness does too.

If you want the short version, it is this. Dare to wonder. Then dare to ask. Then dare to rest.

For the road

Psalm 8:3 to 4. Consider His heavens. He is mindful of you.

Psalm 121:1 to 2. The hills are not your help. The Lord who made them is.

Isaiah 40:26. Lift up your eyes and see who created these things.

Psalm 123:1. Lift your eyes to the One who dwells in the heavens.

James 1:5. Ask God for wisdom. He gives liberally, without reproach.

Proverbs 3:5 to 6. Trust Him. He will direct your paths.

Jeremiah 33:3. Call. He will answer, and show you what you do not know.

Colossians 3:1 to 2. Seek what is above, where Christ is.

Hebrews 12:2. Look unto Jesus, author and finisher, the cross and the throne.

Psalm 27:4 and 8. Behold His beauty. Seek His face.

Isaiah 26:3. A mind stayed on Him is kept in peace.

Psalm 46:10. Be still, and know that He is God.

1 John 1:3. Fellowship with the Father and with His Son.

John 15:4 to 5. Abide. Without Him you can do nothing.

Matthew 18:3 to 4. Humble yourself as a little child.

Psalm 131:1 to 2. Quiet your soul. Do not confuse proud eyes with lifted eyes.

Luke 2:19. Ponder.

Psalm 119:18. Ask Him to open your eyes to His word.

Romans 11:33. His wisdom is deeper than your finding out.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.