What
childlike quality do you need to recapture? Why? (Serendipity
Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 1366).
The
adult brain weighted down with chronically low lying clouds is
severely constrained perceptually. My father once told this story in
a Christmas sermon. During the preceding week, he had to visit a
doctor’s office. A large, decorated and lighted Christmas tree
stood in one corner of the waiting room. Adults sat about absent
mindedly thumbing through magazines or staring blankly before them
resigned to the usual wait in a doctor’s office. The waiting room
entrance door opened and a mother and her little boy stepped in. The
boy walked forward then caught a glimpse of the tree and suddenly
froze transfixed before it. With wide eyes he exclaimed “Wow!’”
When daddy told the story he repeated the exclamation recapturing
the utter astonishment and wonderment of the child, “Wow!!”
“Wow!!.
Isn’t
this what we sorely miss from our childhood? Try to think back upon
Christmas morning as a seven year old child. You enter the living
room in the early morning with the tree sparkling with tensile,
ornaments, and lights, the aroma of pine, and the imminent mystery of
wrapped presents laid out before you—some just for you.
Sometimes
I think if we adults could just recapture this fresh wonderment and
forgo the jaded boredom anesthetizing us, we then could see the
multitude of genuine marvels that gift and surround us. With fresh
clarity we would be enabled to unwrap hidden mysteries and greatly
expand our understanding and knowledge of all things. Imagine having
the innocent wonderment of a child coincident with the objective
realism of an adult. There would be no stopping us now.
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