Wonder Boy

“He who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
--Robert Blake

From where I sit at my computer at home, I can see out the window into our backyard where our green wooden swing set sits. It is a breezy, albeit chilly afternoon, and we have had a brief reprieve from rain as the sun has slowly settled out for its late afternoon debut. And on that swing set, flying “Superman style,” that is, lying on his stomach across the swing and kicking his green frog galoshes behind him, is my just-turned four-year old son.

This is Grayson’s favorite place to be in the whole world--in his own backyard, wearing his rain boots and a grubby gray sweatshirt, with our dachshund cavorting around him.

While I was sitting inside in front of my computer screen, cup of coffee at my side, laboring over a turn of phrase for a sermon, pondering the meaning of the words of Jesus, trying to find the perfect way to convey what it was I thought should be said, and fretting all the while and taking myself very seriously, I heard something in the backyard. I peered through the lace curtains and saw Grayson, smile on his face swinging near the branches of the pine trees yelling at the top of his voice, “I love the world! I love this world! I love it!”

While I, intent on my book-learning and heady theologizing, was puzzling over the wonder of God’s word, a four-year-old was experiencing God’s world. When did I forget how to be rather than to do? When did I become so mired in my adult world that I forgot the simple and truth of the child’s universe? How is it that I have neglected to kiss the joy as it has gone flying by?

As the weather turns warmer (we hope!), and as the grasses turn greener, and as tulips poke their heads out of the soil, may we each find at least a few moments to make our way into that place of wonder, and may we too remember to kiss the joy.