I wonder...

"I can see the whole world!"  - 4 year old boy as the plane took off

Why am I so jaded?

Where has the sense of wonder gone in our world? We tell each other to stop and smell the roses, but there are now 130 species of roses in the world--which ones am I smelling? Right now I'm in a tube 147' and 8" long, with a tail almost 30' tall and a wingspan of 107' 8". And I'm 30,000+ feet above sea level. And I'm yawning as I write that, because it's just so...well...normal.

We live in a world where the what was once the extraordinary stuff of Jules Verne sci-fi is now "normal." How in the world do we NOT become jaded in such a world?

1. Think like a kid. As we took off a little while ago, the small boy in front of me yelled "I can see the whole world!" When we think like children, joy comes naturally. Awe is a common experience. Rolly-pollies are worth closer inspection. Seeing a magician do a French drop with a quarter still takes your breath away. You can spend an hour chasing your brother pulling a string.

Jesus told us to have child-like faith. One aspect off that has to be a sense of joy at even the smallest of creations.

My good friend Ronne Rock often blogs about "kitchen-therapy" (you can see her work at the Christ-Stumbler blog linked below). She takes pure joy in creating bite-sized explosions of rapture (and just about everything else she does in life!). She knows about childlike wonder.

2. Turn off fake life. Anyone who knows me knows that I've not ever been (or at least haven't been for the past 25 years) one of those religious people that gets rid of TVs and only listens to K-LOVE. But the advancement of CGI technology in today's media adds to the jadedness we feel in day-to-day living. We find more and more intense experiences of pseudo-awe in our movies and games, but that only serves to minimize the experience of true beauty. So I'm saying it--turn it off, at least for awhile. Embark on a Bilbo Baggins style adventure, with the Spirit of the Living God as your Gandalf. You can and will be amazed again by the smallest of things.

3. Forget what you know. Okay, so that's harder to do than say, but it's got to happen. Forget what you know about God, and ask the Spirit to show you something fresh. Forget what you know about the Bible, and read it like you just received your first copy. Forget what you know about how the church service is going to go this Sunday, and let some piece of music or some other soul's worship bring joy to your heart. Forget what you know about tomorrow, and live for today.

One of my favorite movies is Hook, with Robin Williams as a grown Peter "Pan" Banning, who must rediscover his Pan identity to rescue his children from Captain Hook. Early in the movie, Peter Banning misses his son's ball games, his daughter's play, and chastises them both for not being serious enough. And at the end he's climbing drainpipes and chasing dogs into doghouses, understanding that life is truly the greatest adventure.

I need that kind of conversion this Christmas.