Do It Again

Perhaps in the lessons we learned when we were young, we were closer to God than we realized; perhaps we have grown old and forgotten some of those lessons. We have forgotten what it is to view the world the way the Creator must view his creation: with a mixture of love and joy for the daisies that look the same every spring, and the sun that rises every morning, and the sky that is blue every day. This is the point G. K. Chesterton makes in his book Orthodoxy, when he writes, “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, Orthodoxy [New York: John Lane Company, 1908], 108).