Do It Again

"... It struck me that infancy provides a rare luxury, a quality of specialness that nearly vanishes for the rest of life. Growing up is a ceaseless scramble for attention. Teenagers stay up past midnight cramming for tests, abuse their bodies in torturous athletic regimens, work overtime to afford designer clothes, primp for hours in front of mirrors - all for recognition. Adulthood merely institutionalises the mad rush for achievement. We want desperately to stand out, to be noticed. Meanwhile, an infant need only take a few herky-jerky steps across a living room carpet and his parents and aunts brag about the triumph to all their friends.

The limelight of special attention may re-ignite when time comes for romance. To a lover every mole is cute, every weird hobby a sign of lively curiosity, every sniffle a cause for inordinate pampering. Once again we are blessed with specialness - for a while, anyway, until the tedium of life chases it away.

What happens during fawning parenthood and enrapt courtship offers a sharp contrast to our normal behaviour. We do not step onto a bus and exclaim to the driver, 'I can't believe it! You mean you drive this great big bus all day long, all by yourself! And you never have an accident? That's wonderful!' We do not stop a fellow shopper in the supermarket aisle and gush, 'I'm so proud of you for knowing what brands to pick. There's a huge variety, and yet you go right to the ones you want and put them in your basket and push them around with confidence! Most impressive!' Yet that spirit, absurd when applied to the humdrumness of life, is precisely what we show toward children and lovers. For them, we 'hallow' the ordinary and mundane.

I do not propose that we make fools of ourselves each time we come across a bus driver or a thrifty shopper. But thinking about our treatment of children and lovers did give me further appreciation for some biblical metaphors. More than any other word pictures, God chooses 'children' and 'lovers' to describe our relationship with Him.

Infinity gives God a capacity we do not have: he can treat all of creation with unrelieved specialness. G. K. Chesterton put it this way:

'A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence of life. Because they are in spirit fierce and free, therfore 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 impossible 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 seperately, 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.'

As I read the Bible, it seems clear that God satisfies his 'eternal appetite' by loving individual human beings. I imagine he views each halting step forward in my spiritual 'walk' with the eagerness of a parent watching a child taking the first step. And perhaps, when the secrets of the universe are revealed, we will learn an underlying purpose of parenthood and romantic love. It may be that God has granted us these times of specialness to awaken us to the mere possibility of infinite love. Of that love, our most intimate experiences here on earth are mere glimpses."

Philip Yancey, from "Just Wondering"

My ears are currently seduced by: Silers Bald - Real Life