When was the last time you were genuinely amazed? Not mildly impressed. Not entertained. Amazed.

Maybe it was your first glimpse of the Grand Canyon, a sky crowded with stars, a newborn grandchild or a stranger’s unexpected kindness. There are moments when life stops us in our tracks and we whisper, “Wow!”

That feeling is called awe. It’s what we experience when something is so beautiful, vast or meaningful that it stretches our ability to comprehend it.

The trouble is that we can get used to almost anything, even astonishing things. G. K. Chesterton put it well: “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” We don’t lack wonders. We only lack the practice of slowing down long enough to notice them.

I shared a message at church last Sunday about “Discovering Awe and Wonder” from Psalm 19. Since then, I’ve been thinking about how awe enriches our lives.

Here are seven benefits of recovering our capacity for awe.

1. Awe gets us outside ourselves.

Our culture is remarkably good at keeping us focused on ourselves. Phones invite us to take selfies, social media asks us to curate our experiences, and our schedules remind us of everything we must accomplish. Even our problems can make the whole world revolve around us.

Awe interrupts that cycle. Beneath a star-filled sky, our thoughts shift from me to something bigger than me. The psalmist knew the feeling: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them?” (Psalm 8:3–4). Sometimes the best way to get over ourselves is simply to look up.

2. Awe puts our problems in perspective.

Awe doesn’t make problems disappear. The mortgage is still due. The diagnosis is still real. But awe changes the size of the frame.

Have you ever stared at the ocean after a day of worrying and realized that the problem consuming your morning is only one small part of a much larger world? A problem can be real without being ultimate. Sometimes we don’t need a smaller problem. We need a larger perspective.

3. Awe makes us more grateful.

Wonder and gratitude are close relatives. Think of the sunrise. We’ve seen thousands, yet no two are alike. The same is true of a child’s laughter, an embrace from someone we love, a conversation with an old friend or the simple gift of waking up to another day.

Familiarity makes extraordinary things seem ordinary, and one challenge of adulthood is that we grow so accustomed to blessings that we stop recognizing them as blessings. Awe teaches us to notice again. It changes the question from “What else do I need?” to “How much have I already been given?”

4. Awe keeps us curious.

A child can spend ten minutes watching an ant carry a crumb across the sidewalk. An adult is more likely to step over it while checking email. As we age, we become certain we’ve seen it all.

Awe challenges that certainty. It gives us permission to say, “I don’t know—but I’d like to know more.” That matters in our faith, too. Faith doesn’t eliminate mystery; it teaches us to live faithfully within it. Science can explain how something happens without exhausting why it matters.

Maybe that’s why Albert Einstein advised, “Never lose a holy curiosity.”

5. Awe connects us with other people.

When we see something beautiful, our instinct is to share it. “Look at that!” “Did you see that?” “You’ve got to come see this!” We don’t want to experience wonder alone, which is one reason concerts, worship services, and family gatherings can be so powerful.

Sometimes the greatest awe isn’t inspired by a mountain or a sunset. It’s inspired by another human being: someone courageous, generous, or forgiving, someone who sacrifices or quietly serves without recognition. Some lives make us say, “That’s the kind of person I want to become.” Or, “I want others to see that trait in me.”

6. Awe inspires us to live differently.

Awe doesn’t always leave us standing still. We see the beauty of creation and want to protect it. We witness generosity and become more generous. We experience God’s grace and want to extend it to someone else.

Awe lifts our eyes, but it can also move our feet. It asks a pointed question: “Now that you’ve seen this, what are you going to do about it?”

7. Awe opens our hearts and minds to God.

For people of faith, awe ultimately points beyond creation to the Creator. A night sky can become a sanctuary. A child’s face can remind us of the miracle of life. An act of forgiveness can become a glimpse of grace.

One of the greatest spiritual dangers isn’t atheism. Sometimes it’s familiarity. We can know the Bible so well that we stop being amazed by its message, pray so often that we stop listening, and attend worship so regularly that we forget what we’re doing. As I commented in that recent sermon, we can become so familiar with Jesus that we lose our sense of wonder.

The people of Nazareth made that mistake. They saw the carpenter’s son and missed the Savior standing in their midst. The problem isn’t that God has stopped doing wonderful things. It’s that we may have stopped noticing.

How do we recover our sense of wonder?

Maybe what we need most is to notice. Notice the sunrise. The stars. The laughter of someone you love. The kindness of a stranger. The miracle of another day. And notice the fingerprint of God.

The older we get, the more tempting it is to trade wonder for familiarity. But there are still sunsets we’ve never seen, songs we’ve never heard, prayers we’ve never prayed and mysteries we haven’t begun to understand. And there is still a God who is full of mystery and revelation.

So slow down. Look closer. Let yourself be amazed.

The rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel insisted, “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement… get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible, never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

Living in “radical amazement” doesn’t require you to travel across the country or around the world. Perhaps the best place to start is by noticing the awe and wonder that is already all around you.