The worst thing about aging is you start being careful. Careful about what you eat. Careful with how you spend money. Careful about where you step. Your mother might say, “Honey, that’s not being careful. That’s called ‘growing up!”

But who springs out of bed in the morning to call a friend to tell them, “Guess what! I just ate a bowl of All-Bran and then I flossed! Can you believe it? I KNOW. It’s awesome!”

As we age, we lose our sense of joy and wonder. Impossible deadlines, bills, sickness, disappointments, can make us very, very careful. In fact, they can suck life right out of us. Like Jack Nicholson said to Morgan Freeman in the movie “The Bucket List,” “I wish I had known you before I was dead.”

How do you restore wonder?  Willy Wonka, in the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” told the children if they wanted to see the world in a magical way, they needed to develop WonkaVision, a fresh sense of wonder.

Have you seen the movie “Earth,” the nature documentary that tracks one year in the life of three particular species on our planet?” We’re talking major wonder.

A funny thing happens when we step outside our everyday lives to look at the world with new eyes. Little trickles of wonder reappear and, inevitably, it leads us to God.

Take Job, for example–that depressing man in the Bible who led a charmed life of family, friends, success and wealth and then lost everything. No more wonder for Job.  All that remained were crabby, judgmental friends, whose go-to solution was “Blame God and die!”

Oh sure. That’ll work. Throw a pity party and invite everyone to come.

However, in Job 38-41 God shows up and decides to give Job and Doomsday Boys a lesson about wonder in the midst of the grim circumstances.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? … Who shut up the sea behind doors …when I fixed limits for it …when I said, ‘…Here is where your proud waves halt?’ … Have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place? … Do you send lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you? … Do you give the horse its strength? … Does the eagle soar at your command?”

God’s holy recipe for WonkaVision?  It’s not about having the right life circumstances. It’s about having the right perspective.

Whether your life seems just beige at the moment or very dark, God has it covered.  You may not know what to do. He does. Go back to the Source and reset your compass to Him as your True North. He’ll help you figure it out. That’s His job.