The road is full of wonder

No one attains faith without first achieving the prerequisites of faith. First we praise, then we believe. We begin with a sense of wonder and arrive at radical amazement. The first response is reverence and awe, openness to the mystery that surrounds, and we are led to be overwhelmed by the glory.

God is not a concept produced by deliberation. God is an outcry wrung from heart and mind; God is never an explanation, it is always a challenge. It can only be uttered in astonishment.

Religious existence is a pilgrimage rather than an arrival. Its teaching—a challenge rather than an intellectual establishment, an encyclopedia of ready—made answers.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 296