Eyes of a Child

As much as I do not believe in jinxing anything, it is quite frustrating to have missed posting last Tuesday, and for that I apologize! Last week was very eventful, with family friends coming down from Toronto to Ottawa, visiting the church that I serve at, driving to a cottage two hours north of Toronto, and finally coming back to Toronto in order to attend a wedding. All that in a span of nine days. Of course, I am not at all trying to justify anything...moving on!

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The Wonder of a Child

Have you ever been with a child who has been introduced to something new? They want to see it happen again and again and yet again - once is not enough. They are always infatuated with the newness of things, with the surprising fact that things are. They are enraptured with the extraordinary nature of the ordinary.

Of course, this is usually exasperating for the average adult, such as we might be, who has long since shed any sort of wonder at the state of affairs. 'it is what it is' is a saying we all know -don't we miss the glory that is all around us? 

                      From the Big Bang           

                                 to the evolutionary process 

                                                       to the reality of a soul

                                                                  the heart of the individual

                                 there's wonder from pole to pole, from soul to soul.

It seems odd to talk about things like this if there isn't wonder about any of it, because it is all simply incredible. Sometimes, and I am under this indictment, we are too clever for our own good. 

                                                When the stars are but points of distance, 

                                 when time is no more than numbers on a page, 

                     when a man is merely his blood and bones, 

                                    and the soul is a footnote 

we've lost touch with true wisdom. 

Knowledge is as common as stones, but there is a reason wisdom is portrayed as a woman in the Bible - there is an aspect of seeking - who proclaims that true understanding stems from humility. 

And all this is simply preamble up to the point.

An Example

I don't if I've said this already, but I live in the church building where I also am interning. This week I was stumbling through the tiredness that usually flows over from a stressful week to the next and I realized something quite interesting: my surroundings were stripped of their newness. 

I am what you might call a church-boy. I've always gone to church and every one of them has their own set of secrets: a staircase no one uses, a pool table that is free between 10:15-11:10 (if you skipped the class as I occasionally did as a kid), or a room with just enough space to start a miniature dodge ball game (the best!). All church buildings are like that. 

Yesterday I was walking through the corridor when I realized that the building was finally completely revealed; nothing more to be seen. 

And then the reality sets in: church isn't the building I live in, no matter that we call it as such. It's like I had the eyes of a child for a moment, realizing that the building isn't holy. God isn't in the walls, not within the bricks or tingling in some holy books hidden in some secret location you'd only discover in a Dan Brown novel. The glory of God, once comprised in a temple, was moved a long time ago. 

There is no longer an eternal fire that burns within a secret room or behind a veil; God moved His Spirit into His people. Now every person who trusts in God finds that the Spirit of God comes into them like a flame.

Eyes of a Child

That's just one example I saw this week of how easy it is to normalize things, to accidentally rub out all the color from our lives. But keep your eyes open; think like a child. 

I'll leave you with a quote that always exhilarated me.

Be safe you guys. Love y'all.

"A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." - GK Chesteron, Orthodoxy

Beautiful.