The other night whilst babysitting kids I had to resort to sitting them in front of the idiotbox. There wasn’t much else I could do at such short notice – and it was mostly for a two hour block anyway.
But whilst we were watching TV I noticed how transfixed the kids were. In one part of the movie (Jimmy Neutron) the kids actually ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhd’ which really made me smile.
It brought to mind what Ravi Zacharias once said (and how Matthew elegantly puts it as well) about wonder. He recounted a story of how he would tell the same story to his three children – aged 6, 4, and 2 respectively. To his 6 year old child he would tell the story as follows:
Once there was a little boy named Tommy. Tommy walked up to his closet door and then Tommy opened the door…and then a giant dragon jumped out! At which point his 6 year old child’s eyes would light up!
To his 4 year old he would tell the story would follow as such:
Once there was a little boy named Tommy. Tommy walked up to his closet door…and then Tommy opened the door… at which point his 4 year old child’s eyes would light up!
To his 2 year old he would tell the story as follows:
Once there was a little boy named Tommy. Tommy walked up to his closet door… at which point his child’s eyes would light up!
The point? For his 6 year old child, it took a dragon to excite her. For his 4 year old, it only took opening the door for his eyes to light up. For his 2 year old, merely walking to the door is enough to light his eyes up…
The older we get the more it takes to fill our hearts with wonder…and only God is big enough to fill it.
Comments are closed