Treasures

"Will you color with me?" asked Sylvan.
"Not right now, I'm going to go do..."
something important.
I went to do something I needed to do, didn't I?
Oh no.
What a glorious invitation I passed today.
I could have colored!
I never color anymore.
I saw I wasn't good at coloring, so I stopped.
Growing up is dangerous like that.
It's so easy to forget that playing isn't competing,
so easy to confuse the serious with the important
or the skillful with the valuable.
Sylvan wanted to color while Leo played in a cardboard box
and Violette carefully balanced a pillow on her head.
How wonderfully, worshipfully, beautifully silly!
But me?
Well, I had to do something important.

-Nathan Bubna

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I was at the hospital visiting my grandpa (papaw) all weekend. While I was there at some point I was walking through the entrance from the parking lot and in front of me was a little kid and his two parents. The kid walked goofy with each foot going a different way (the little kid walk) probably because he was mesmerized by the hospital entrance and lobby. His head turned a million different directions as he danced around being pulled along by his parents in his light up shoes (which I totally want a pair of). It was an adventure to see the place.

I started thinking to myself about how I have totally lost the adventure of walking, it's so weird when you grow up, when you learn to focus on simply getting to the destination and the world around you is a blur. I thought about how I'd walked through there six or seven times and I never noticed the desk in the middle behind the plants with a lady sitting there or the different style tiles.

How terrible it is to grow up sometimes.
How incredible it is to grow in a kingdom that promotes such wonder.
I'm scared and comforted by Jesus' words when he says "Unless you become like a child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
I believe he instills the aw and curiosity that we lost when we mapped everything out.
I believe his kingdom brings magnificent splendor in generic lobbies and halls we walk through.
"Therefore whoever humbles himself as a child is greatest in the kingdom of heaven."
God is referred to as father over and over, maybe because part of our walk in this life is to be there with our father our dad, like a child, in wonder of the things around us. Asking Him questions and listening to Him talk, teaching us what life is made of.

I love it when my dad will sometimes take his hands and clasp them together. Then he brings it his hands up to his mouth and by some act of God creates a whistle/flute noise that I have never been able to create. I can remember time and time again wondering how someone can do that with just their hands.

I'm learning more and more that is what God is like in my life. He uses ordinary things in my life and creates extraordinary acts. He shows me that it is not just a lobby. These are not just patients, nurses, employees, but rather children in this kingdom. That I could go straight to my destination, or I can stop and realize that part of the destination is the journey there. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from this kid.
Help me to look in wonder of the kingdom of heaven at work around me.
Open my eyes so I can see.