09/22/2008 - 09/22/2008

Childlike Mystery

I love watching my 3 year old daughter play. A green piece of streamer becomes an outfit to wear, something that needs to be transported in a wagon, or a line to cross. Sometimes she wants to discover things for the sake of discovering things with little thought or care for personal benefit; what’s under this rock, what’s behind this door, how will my brother react if I throw this toy at him (watching a child play is not always cute). She is so full of curiosity and imagination, so full of life. She isn’t bogged down by having to have all her ducks in a row (and yet she does occasionally line up toys) or need to have all her ‘i’s” dotted and ‘t’s crossed (she’s just happy if she recognizes what an ‘i’ or a ‘t’ is). I think most people envy that quality in a child.

Jesus’ disciples once asked him, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” (Matthew 18). Jesus calls over a little child and promptly tells the disciples that unless they become like this little child they need not even bother contemplating heaven at all. Jesus doesn’t have time for adults with over stuffed egos attempting to angle for positions of power. He’s interested in humility, curiosity, imagination and life. Every moment of every day is a moment filled with possibilities.

When we become a people who only focus on ourselves and our positions (which the disciples were doing in Matthew 18), we lose sight of the mystery of each moment of each day. Focussing on our self and our position is a rather futile thing to do because as we all know life is not in our control. Every day looks different, filled with a variety of experiences that we can only look back upon and wonder how it all got pieced together. The Christian way is a way of embracing mystery, embracing the fact that there is a God at work who sees what we don’t see and knows what we don’t know.

So for us, each day is a day of living life freshly as a child, discovering, imagining, and enjoying. There may be hard days when we discover that touching the stove was a bad idea, or that the neighbours cat doesn’t like being pulled by the tail, but that’s a part of growing into the mysteries of God’s world.