Last week a friend let me borrow a book, though apparently it’s already been sitting on my shelf for years. I may have too many books. It’s a book called Dangerous Wonder. And it’s about the value of childlike faith. And it is of value, without a doubt.
A mother and her little boy were traveling across the country on a train. The little boy was obviously excited. He looked out of the window of the train intently, not missing a thing that they passed by. “Mom, look at that field with all it’s colors!”, “Look at those cows in the field”, “Wow, we’re going over a wide river – I can’t see the bridge that we are on – it looks like we are floating in the sky”, “Mom, look at those birds! I’ve never seen birds like those before”. He seemed to get more excited as they went along, and louder. Finally the mother turned the other people in the railway car and said, “Please excuse my son. He still thinks the world is full of wonder.” And maybe we should too…
GK Chesterton suggested that maybe even God is more like a child than we think. He told of how children have abounding energy. Bouncing on the grown up’s knee, they always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up does it again until nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to rejoice in this kind of monotony. But perhaps God is… Maybe it’s not so automatic that the sun rises, the daisies grow, the moon shines. Isn’t it possible, Chesterton says that God says every morning, to the sun “Do it again”; 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 God has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and maybe our Father is younger than we…
Jesus too spoke of the importance of this, saying that to come into the kingdom of God, we’ve got to come like a little child. Let us too live in wonder, coming to God with the faith as of a child.