“Our once great western Christian civilization is dying. If this matters to followers of Jesus Christ, then we must set aside our denominational differences and work together to strengthen the things that remain and reclaim what has been lost. Evangelicals and Catholics must stand together to re-establish that former Christian culture and moral consensus. We have the numbers and the organization but the question is this: Do we have the will to win this present spiritual battle for Jesus Christ against secularism? Will we prayerfully and cooperatively work toward a new Christian spiritual revival ― or will we choose to hunker down in our churches and denominationalisms and watch everything sink into the spiritual and moral abyss of a New Dark Age?” - Mark Davis Pickup

Saturday, January 31, 2015

RECAPTURING THE JOY OF CHILDREN

I love children for their sense of wonder! Babies can teach their grandfathers anew how to be enchanted with life. That is the great gift my grandchildren gave me. Revisiting wonder, enchantment, joy. They also made me ashamed that I lost those child-like qualities somewhere along the path between early childhood and adulthood. 

But living and remembering are two dramatically different things. For an old man to re-capture a sense of wonder is not an exercise of the intellect rather an exercise of the heart propelled by a love for another so intense it aches.

Joy is different from happiness -- although they have many of the same attributes. Happiness is a response to something we gained or attained. Joy simply is. Joy is closer to God than happiness. C.S. Lewis said that Joy is the serious business of heaven. 


A toddler tries to taste a flower; in her mind pretty must also be tasty. We laugh to watch her discover that what is pleasing to the eye is not always pleasing to the tongue. Yet in her world it should be. Perhaps in the next world the two will merge. The beauty of the world is only a pale shadow, and a small inkling of heaven's beauty too  profound and perfect for us to accept in our present bodies and form. We must yet be transformed. [1]   

Simple joys are best. They cannot be harnessed and sold to the
highest bidder, to the exclusion of those who can't pay. Joy is a spiritual state not a commodity. Joy is the possession of babies and small children that they freely offer to those who are near and open to the idea of humbling themselves, becoming child-like, in order to receive their divine gift of joy.

I believe a man is never so tall as when he welcomes a child and stoops to enter their world.

Mark

[Click on image below or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yCI76DnSd8 for "Thank God for Kids" by Kenny Chesney]



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[1] 1John 3.2 (cf. 1Corinthians 15.50-53, 2Corinthians 5.3-4, Philippians 3.21.) 

  

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