Growing Young

I have nothing to say.
But I want to write.
I’ve wanted to write for the last 2 weeks, I really have. And although I’ve had plenty of cool things to share, they all felt “little”, too little to share with you. I didn’t feel like I had any huge “revelations” or life-changing testimonies to impart. Nothing seemed significant enough.
Then desire overcame hesitation and opened this page to my most recent posts.
Then I realized. Then I saw.

In these last couple weeks not writing, not sharing, my eyes stopped seeing the significance in it all. I started to believe again that for something to be big it needed to be big. But everything is big. And that doesn’t turn around to say that if everything is big, nothing is (insert Incredibles movie quote here). Everything is big when we see it with our hearts; when we have vision in Him.
Last weekend I climbed a mountain spur of the moment (thus I was still in dress clothes and fancy sandals) talking ecstatically the whole time about the greek words ἐντός and ἔρημος and how amazing they are with everything He taught me. It wasn’t until we passed people panting and sweating and breathing heavily that I realized I wasn’t. I was slightly out of breath but when I stopped talking I realized it was just the out-of-breath you get when you have something so exciting to share that your lungs can’t keep up. It would have been the same had we been sitting in Starbucks, and that amazed me. I don’t do this often folks, yet you never would have known. My heart rate was carried along by the One who keeps time, and I never lacked a thing. That energy was the one we see in children, who for the sheer joy of everything around them can go and go and go without pause. We laugh and say, “Where do they get all that energy?” as our tired bones sink a little deeper in the couch and we sip of our second cup of coffee.
Oh, I think I’m realizing something.

We know that repeatedly in the Bible God says that we are to become like little children. Not once does He say to become wise and learned; instead that He will use the foolish things of this world to shame the wise. He never calls us to be grown-ups. He calls us to become fully matured, but that’s very different. I know plenty of grown-ups (the majority, in fact) who bear none, or few, of God’s characteristics of being fully matured. And I know many “children” who bear more and more of the marks of their Father every day. Maybe being fully matured involves growing young. That wonder in a child’s eyes as they observe something they have never seen before: my daughter as she sees the moon sparkling during the day time, that is the wonder and joy He wants us to have everyday as we behold more of Him, and He makes this old world new again. I’ve seen countless blades of grass in my lifetime, and it should be old news to me, yet this week I caught myself staring awestruck at the perfect bouquet of life surrounding my bare-feet. Every color of green, every shape of leaf, every texture and translucency arrayed in perfect arrangement in this one square-foot of lawn. Yet two weeks ago I trampled this space without paying any heed to its perfection.
That wonder is what gives children all that energy. This world is new to them. The story their imagination is telling them is full of sparkling new adventure. They’ve never seen the way the humidity rises lifts off of the driveway after a refreshing rain. That bird call is completely new on their young ears. The way the sun shoots through a ceiling of leaves spotlighting the forest floor, is magical because it has never been dulled to them. But it’s dull to us. The way the birds arrange themselves on the telephone line doesn’t spin our minds with curiosity. The dance of the grasses as the storm blows in doesn’t catch our attention; we don’t hear their invitation to join the dance.

But what if we did?
What if we got up right then and, instead of dodging the raindrops in pursuit of safety, we danced and swayed with the prairie? What if we took 5 minutes to stare at the “weed-filled” yard and shook our heads in wonder at how He made so many perfect little things? What if we stilled at the distant sound of music and let our legs carry us until we found it?
What if we closed our eyes on this world and opened them on the spiritual world, only to see that this tiny space we occupy has been made Holy because He’s here and we are with Him?
Boundless energy, never-ending peace. Children feel everything strongly, no emotion is lost on them, but in the arms of a good mom or a good dad everything sad comes untrue.
And only now am I realizing that ^^ has been my last couple weeks since I wrote you. I’m growing young. I’m seeing things the way my child-eyes had seen them… only better.

And when the world is new again
And the children of the King
Are ancient in their youth again
Maybe it’s a better thing
A better thing
To be more than merely innocent
But to be broken then redeemed by love
Maybe this old world is bent
But it’s waking up
And I’m waking up

– Andrew Peterson, “Don’t You Want to Thank Someone”

And it wasn’t until writing this out that I realized all those “little” things too little to share were really all pieces of something big. I’d thought that God had led me up and out to an open field where I could roam freely and safely; where I could rest, and that didn’t seem significant enough to tell you about. But in this field I’m becoming a child again. Innocence is fragile, but this redemption after brokenness is so strong. Oh the wild fierceness in a child’s eyes when they know exactly who and Who’s they are and aren’t afraid to rejoice in all that means. I don’t know where we’re heading yet, there are hints that soon we will go on an adventure through the woods. But this place is good, and made very good by our presence here. He’s making me young here, and in His joy I’ll stay.

“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.”

-G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy