Thursday, November 10, 2016

Reflection Upon Being Young

 
When I was quite young, I enjoyed going through one particular drawer in my dad's desk. There were things in there that captured my attention and imagination. I held them and tried to come up with fantastic uses for things that my parents (I'm sure) thought were quite mundane.








 
Truth be told, they were all quite mundane: An old typewrite eraser, a colored straight edge, a neon orange French curve and a brass contraption to hold a roll of stamps.

 





 Perhaps part of the secret of staying young is remembering to see the fantastic in the common, the "wow" in the mundane, and the glory within the plain.  I think that our adult hearts become jaded and so used to the things around us that we become hardened to the wonder of the reality that God blesses us with.  We need to look and appreciate that beauty in the color; we need to savor the texture of a cloth; we need to smile and thank God for the people that He placed us with.  



 
Ultimately it's that.  It's the people and the relations.  Especially the relation with God.  Once we have that—once we understand deeply, that He is both the Giver and the the Gift—once that permeates our heart, percolates through our mind, and exudes from our every action, we will be thankful people, grateful people, humbly appreciative people.  We will see that indeed, every good and perfect gift falls down from heaven above from the Father of Light in whom there is no shadow of turning.  We will then be able to rejoice in the smallest of things because we know that we have the best possible: we have God who said: "I will be your God and you will be My people."



---------------  A Related Quote  ---------------

"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

Take the above Chesterton quote with a grain of salt, but there is something to it for we are told that He never changes and that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, forever!