{"id":22,"date":"2013-04-04T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.195.124.95\/~redletu4\/how-punctuation-led-me-to-a-life-of-wonder\/"},"modified":"2020-03-03T23:56:31","modified_gmt":"2020-03-04T05:56:31","slug":"how-punctuation-led-me-to-a-life-of-wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidrupert\/how-punctuation-led-me-to-a-life-of-wonder\/","title":{"rendered":"How Punctuation Led Me To a Life Of Wonder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
There was a point in my life when a question mark<\/b> hung over my head.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
You see, I\u00a0didn\u2019t know the future, and it scared me. I couldn\u2019t figure out tomorrow, next year or the future. I was paralyzed by the thought of just not knowing. Uncertainty led to stupidity as I tried to order the future around my stupid pride. That question mark eventually led me to a relationship with God, a place to turn the question mark into a period.<\/b><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Then for a while my quest was for knowledge about the deeper things.\u00a0I began to study thinkers \u2014\u00a0C.S. \u00a0Lewis<\/a>,\u00a0Francis Schaeffer<\/a>,\u00a0Josh McDowell<\/a>,\u00a0Walter Martin<\/a>, Ravi Zacharais and other men who could give reason for faith gripped my mind. I loved the challenge, eager to share my headstrong belief. This was my semicolon<\/b> season, where the sentences were never short and crisp, but full of reasoning and postulation.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Then I wanted to see where God was at work. I \u00a0talked to the homeless, the drug addict, the lost dogs who had wandered. I sought them out and shared the gospel and hoped for positive return. I wanted the experience of their lives, broken and yet so fixable. The comma<\/b>\u00a0indicated that there was more to say, that there was more to the story.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In the meantime, \u00a0I looked for God to stir my own soul, to awaken me every day.Then I just wanted to\u00a0find my way back home<\/i>.\u00a0The path that I knew was right \u00a0was overgrown, neglected by my own disregard. Then abandoned by love, spurned by friends, and forgotten, I wallowed in pity. \u00a0I had all the salvation, all the knowledge and the experience in the world, but I still had no idea. The colon <\/b>marked my days.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Now, I\u2019m home again and there\u2019s one thing I want.\u00a0I ask for wonder.\u00a0<\/b><\/i>It\u2019s a life without definition, and I\u2019m alright with that. I want to hear the birdsong like it\u2019s the first\u00a0time. I want to lose myself in this deep love that has no beginning and no end. I want to drive on a dusty road with the windows down, the radio up high, a 1\/4 tank of gas and not a worry in the world. On many days, it\u2019s a life of an exclamation point.<\/b><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I\u2019m thinking that my future may come full circle and be marked again by a question mark.<\/b> And that\u2019s alright. \u00a0I\u2019ll get lost in the wonder of it all and just smile. I want to scrawl a question mark on a blank piece of paper without the grip of fear of the unknown.<\/div>\n
Funny, but embracing the uncertainty is the most certain thing a man can do.<\/div>\n

We strain to renew our capacity for wonder, to shock ourselves into astonishment once again.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 Shana Alexander<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a point in my life when a question mark hung over my head. You see, I\u00a0didn\u2019t know the future, and it scared me. I couldn\u2019t figure out tomorrow, next year or the future. I was paralyzed by the thought of just not knowing. Uncertainty led to stupidity as I tried to order the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,131,263,307,464,679,683,714,785,976],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-life-of-wonder","category-christianity","category-exclamation-mark","category-francis-schaeffer","category-josh-mcdowell","category-punctuation","category-question-mark","category-religion-and-spirituality","category-shana-alexander","category-wonder"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Punctuation Led Me To a Life Of Wonder<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There was a point in my life when a question mark hung over my head. You see, I\u00a0didn't know the future, and it scared me. 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