Wonder and Awe

I had a visit the other day from the little boy who lives across the street. He came without any inhibitions or fear. What he did come with was an incredible sense of wonder and awe. He wanted to know what I was doing, how I was doing it, and why. He asked about everything that came into his sight line. "What's that?" "What does that do?" "How does this work?" He seemed to marvel at the simplest things. A saw hanging over my workbench. A box. A bug. But he saved the best for when we stepped inside for just a moment. With eyes wide like Christmas morning he exclaimed, "Wow! I've never seen this before!"

I think this is the child-likeness that Jesus said we must have in order to enter into the Kingdom of God. Somehow in our grown-up world we've become jaded - incapable of wonder and awe. We call it maturity and think it's a good thing. But all we've really done is to lose the innocence through which we used to see life.
To become a little child again is to recapture the surprise and wonder we once had as we viewed reality. Do you remember the excitement of catching fireflies in a jar? Now we don't even notice these incredible, luminescent creatures. Do you remember finding the coin under your pillow the day after you lost your first tooth? Or the fascination with thunder storms on hot summer afternoons? All of the wonder and awe seems to have been relegated to the past; to a childhood that was so long ago.
To be all that Christ requires for us to be, we must somehow recapture our capacity for wonder and our willingness to express it as we confront all of the realities of life. We've got to get over ourselves enough to say, "Wow! I've never seen this before!"

I'm really glad the little boy from across the street came by to visit.