Everyday when she wakes up it
starts all over again.  When Tayla’s eyes
open she looks at the world with eyes filled with wonder. She follows every movement with the
astuteness of an eagle. Every texture
against her skin brings new delight. Watching
her draws me back into the life of a child.  Why do we loose this wonder? Why do we become so dull and bland?  Why do we become know-it-alls? We live a black-and-white life on a
multi-color canvass. 

 During our vacation we did a lot of
people watching.  There’s something
magical to just watch people’s congregating on a beach.  One afternoon a grandmother played with her
precious grandchild. She picked him up
and lifted him so that he could look at water flowing from a pipe into a little
stream.  The four year old boy was
totally mesmerized. After a few minutes
his sister joined them and the grandmother invited her to join the wonder
party.  She gave the pipe one look,
shrugged as if to say ‘it’s only a pipe’, and walked away. As I watched I wondered when she lost her
fresh eyes. Did she loose it in her
fifth year? Her sixth?

 These thoughts have percolated in
my mind for the last few days.  Today I met with one of my friends and he
ordered a Fanta to drink.  I asked him if
he still tastes the soft drink. If he
still relishes it with the zest he experienced the first time.  His answer was no. He grew accustomed to it. I think we loose our wonder for a lot of
things and then it gets relegated to the familiar or the functional. When we
eat, we do it to become full.  How life would change if we savored the tastes
in our food again!  When we wonder at the
amazing taste of a watermelon we can put that activity back on the plane it
should be – it is part of our ordinary worship.

 Tayla teaches me to see again – she’s
facilitating a process of reverse atrophy. 

 Two quotes by GK Chesterton addresses
these issues:

“The greatest of all illusions is
the illusion of familiarity”

"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 grown old and our
Father has been forever young."