Do It Again!!!

The onset of a new day to a two year old is as full of wonder and adventure as the first day of creation.  There is no recognition of mundane.  To our granddaughter, all is profound from seeing a dog walking down the street to being allowed to use the Elmer’s Glue all by herself.  Enthusiasm is her middle name.  She will literally run laps through the kitchen, living room, front hall, and mudroom, over and over and over again, each time shouting out “Hi, Momma,” as she passes by.  She has an extensive vocabulary for a child her age, but the word “boredom” has no meaning to her at all.  A day is never long enough to accommodate her energy and unending questions. 

Last week, I taught her the song “The wise man built his house upon the rock,” complete with hand motions.  Each time when I came to the end of the song and the foolish man’s house went SPLAT, she would burst out laughing, deep and genuine, and shout, “Do it again, Grandma.  Do it again!”  The repetition only seemed to reinforce the joy she was getting from hearing the song about forty times in a row, until I could break away and do something exciting like changing her brother’s diaper. 

At night, when finally the house was silent with two sleeping babies and two exhausted parents, I curled up under the duvet in the study and re-read one of my favorite books, Orthodoxy  by G. K. Chesterton.  After a non-stop day of songs and running laps and building towers of blocks (all the stuff that Grandmas are licensed to do), I chuckled at what I read, as if this specific page arrived right on schedule. 

p. 58  …it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising.  His routine might be due, not to lifelessness, but to a rush of life.  The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy.  A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.  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.  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.  The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence;  it may be a theatrical encore.

That is the joy and wonder in which we were designed to live.

…and a little child

shall lead them.

                    Isaiah 11.6

Do it again!