As I thought more about what I wrote in the last post, another thought crossed my mind. Jesus said that unless you accept God's kingdom with the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in. (Mark 10:13-16 The Message)As a parent I think my favorite age of my children was 18 months. They became mobile and their consuming life task was to discover and explore. A toddler can pick up a leaf and be consumed with wonder for this amazing artifact of nature. And vicariously I am caught anew in the wonder and see the leaf through eyes of amazement.
What did I lose when I became an adult? I lost a modicum of wonder. I stopped seeing the leaf as wonder, and saw it as duty, in raking up my yard. I realized that things don't always turn out the way I think they should. I have suffered enough grief and loss to know that there is pain in the world, and that I am not exempt. The older I get the more I am tempted to make wonder irrelevant in my life. Wonder takes time and the world isn't that shining jewel I think I remember as a child. I am sorely tempted to put cynicism in its place, and in fact, many times I have.
Jesus said that if I want to get in to the kingdom, that I need to become like a child. I need to reconnect with that sense of wonder. If I can't recover wonder, then how am I going to deal with the life after this where wonder may be my primary task.
If I let wonder atrophy then I may enter the next form of my existence crippled and completely unprepared for what awaits me.
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