Everyday Joys

I have a secret talent. It’s a talent that not many of you will know about. I guess that’s why I referred to it as being a secret talent. It’s not a talent that I brag about or often show off. I can’t even say that it is a talent that I am particularly proud of. But amongst one, literally small, very particular demographic of people, it is a talent which is highly revered. In fact, I recently stood by a small crowd of my fans as they chanted for me to show off this talent. My talent is this… I can jump moderately high from a standing start. Not so high that I have any chance of winning any Olympic medals (or even a header in a game of football), but amongst my fans, it’s almost as though I jump up to the very stars themselves! Of course, this is helped by the fact that they are all about 1ft tall – I am indeed talking about the toddlers out our churches Nippers group.

Perception is a curios thing. What appears to be extraordinary to one can appear common place to another. What is beautiful to one can be ugly to another. What is good news to one can be bad news to another. What is immediately noticeable to one can be completely missed by another. The perception of children is particularly interesting. Being so young they often see things that they have rarely seen before and each sighting is special and exciting, the world around them is a place full of wonder and adventure. Yet our adult eyes dulled by familiarity can so often look at the same things and dismiss them as uninteresting, or even not notice them at all. We can easily miss out on the everyday joys of little things like pretty flowers and bird song.

Our patterns and rhythms of life although helpful, can easily become a well-worn path through life that we trudge along fixing our eyes on the same things and choosing only ever to see them from the same perspective. We can even become upset when something or someone challenges how we see the world and what we think about life. And yet life is still so much more than any one of us has seen or explored, it can still surprise and teach us. But perhaps our grown-up hearts no longer have the thirst for adventure to enjoy new ways of seeing things but rather prefer the comfort of what we are familiar with. Now I am not knocking familiarity – in fact, I am quite a fan. Without some of the foundations of familiarity I scarce believe that I would be able to function at all, and yet, I am certain that my desire to cling firmly only to what I know and what is comfortable can cost me the chance to see so much more; to understand the thoughts and feelings of others, to find deeper purpose in my life, to bless those around be, and even to see more of God and to follow where He is leading.

If my heart really longs to see more of God, I may have to learn to see the world more like a toddler once again. To re-learn the courage to go into unfamiliar places and accept that the world can be seen in a different way from my own. It was said at the recent BU assembly; “if you want to see things you’ve never seen before, you need to do things you’ve never done before”, and I believe that God has new things for us. That’s not to say that we need to change everything, but that we need to be willing to change wherever and however God might ask us to. And in order to do that we need to have open eyes and open hearts to be surprised by the beauty of unfamiliarity – which can be scary. In the words of Bilbo Baggins in Lord of the Rings; “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to...” [J.R.R. Tolkien]. But if we allow God to sweep us of our feet, I’m sure that we will only find ourselves in good places!