Learning To See Through A Child's Eyes Once Again

It's really fun. And really painful. It's like giving birth. (Though I can't say I really know...)

No, I haven't given birth, but the mental pain is like that. Worse than constipation. (This one I really know...)

But the joy of delivering a story... gosh! it really feels like your very own baby. Which it definitely is. =)

But on a more thoughtful note, writing a children's book is really one of the toughest things to do. You need to exact a severe austerity of words, and yet ensure that the vocabulary is so simple that a little child can literally understand it.

Writing a children's book has forced me to get down on my knees, and to practise thinking like a child again. To throw out high-level abstract reasoning, and to put on the eyes of a child. To see wonder in the simplest acts: "He opened the door..."

John Ortberg described the different levels of wonder for his three children. I think he wrote something like this:

"He opened the door, and behind the door was something. To his surprise, he saw a _____!"

He said that his 9-years old daughter showed surprise after he had read out the entire sentence. But for his 5 years old child, he was surprised that something actually lay behind the door.

And his 2 years old son? "He opened the door..." The child was filled with awe and wonder at the very act of a door being opened.

And I think, from time to time, we need to learn to see the beauty of life again as God created it to be. To stand together with Him in holy appraisal, and put our hands on our hips, and smile, and say: "It is very good."

To learn to see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower.

TH and I were star-watching the other night. And TH asked me whether there is life on other planets. I said, "I don't know..."

Suddenly, it struck me that ... what if the stars themselves are alive? After all, stars are born and they die. In a sense, they can give birth to more stars, if they collapse into black holes.

And the Bible did say that stars have a heavenly kind of "flesh". And more metaphorically, God did ask Job, "Where were you... when the morning stars sang for joy?"

Maybe the stars really are alive. It's just that we don't know how to see them as they really are. We just see burning balls of fire. Hardly the ancient sentinels of the skies that they might be. After all, God does knows each star by its own name. Cool! :)

Maybe, just maybe... this world is more alive than we ever could think it to be. The Bible does give a whisper, a hint of a broken world that is groaning... and perhaps it was more alive than we ever knew it to be. Maybe, maybe... all of creation is whispering for the day when it shall be truly alive once again, and the mountains and hills shall burst forth into songs - the hills are alive with the sound of music! - and the trees of the fields shall clap their hands...

And on that glorious day, we shall literally hear the stones tremble out, "Worthy is the Lamb!" And every fish, every bird, every amoeba and every bacterium shall cry out in one huge crescendo, "Worthy is the Lamb!"

:)

Just my imagination, but I think sometimes, the world we see it as of now is actually the Shadow World, the World That Was Not Supposed To Be. Earth as Thulcandra, the Silent Planet. A world gone mute, after the Fall. But it's waiting to sing its song once again, as it did in the days of Adam.

"Lord, the world is waiting
Let all creation see the coming of Your day..."

Maybe, maybe... who knows? :) Maybe the truth is stranger than fiction.

Hee!