Feel Like a Kid Again

There was a quiet moment this morning in our house. Mainly because Jacob was not here and the dog was outside. There was no TV or music. I was standing in the kitchen and morning sunlight filled the sink from the window above it. The faucet was running and gave off a residual mist that glistened in the light. There was a fly buzzing around. I turned the faucet off and listened to the quiet and the fly. I suddenly remembered being a four year old in my great-grandparents' home. My sister and I used to stay there in the afternoons. It was a shoebox of a house, but at that age it might as well have been a mansion. I remember playing on the floor in the dining room while sunlight would stream through the curtains. I was chasing a buzzing fly around the table and chairs. My running stirred up dust and the little flakes and particles glistened in the sunlight. It almost seemed like pixie dust floating in the air. I tried to catch them but they disappeared as soon as my hand got close. I blew them and they would swirl wildly on my breath. Then the fly would buzz nearby and I left the magical particles to find the amazingly agile insect. I could fill many hours in their home on the simplest things in complete wonder.

How often do we miss what children see so clearly? Flies and dust are disgusting to me now, but they were sources of such wonder and exploration as a child. Ravi Zacharias wrote a book called Recapture the Wonder. It is book for most audiences (not as academic as some of his other work) and it addresses this very problem. I call it a problem because when we cease to see the wonder around us, we will miss the One it points to. Jesus said we are to come to Him like a child. He does not mean for us to become childish, but child-like. Child-like does not mean we simply believe everything we hear. This is not a call to "blind-faith". It means He wants us to see the wonder of what is around us, explore it and see how it leads us back to Him. We can peer into His word with fresh wonder and not guilt-driven, self-righteous labor. We can wonder and exult in the hope that comes to us through Christ, even in the midst of suffering. Suffering. That is the stuff adults warn children about when they get "into the real world." Children are in the real world and they often see it clearer than adults. Adulthood seems to muddy the water with cynicism and disappointment. I thanked God today as I heard the buzzing fly and saw the streaming sunlight. I thanked Him for Romans 5:1-11. Check it out.

As I finished typing this, my beautiful wife just brought me an ice cream cone. Boy, I feel like a kid again!