After a week of Beach Break with our high schoolers in South Padre, and a week of surviving VBS, I’m beat. My eyes are dark. I haven’t run in over two weeks. I’ve battled the shakes of too much Starbucks and Monsters. And I’ll be able to have a short Sabbath rest in 13 minutes…

On Tuesday, our oldest son and I were playing a game of ‘crab ball’ (envision tennis or badminton, but with a stuffed toy crab as the ball…). We were trying to get the hang of a less-than-aerodynamic flying crab when Darien says to me, "Daddy…I was thinking about something… I could be a missionary when I grow up. "

"Yeah…that would be pretty awesome" I reply.

"I could go to places where people don’t know about crab ball and teach them how to play it. Then, after I beat them, I could tell ‘em about Jesus."

Perfect. Through the eyes of a child.

A day or so later, I received this quote from GK Chesterton, via Scott M. :

"A child kicks its 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. But perhaps God is strong enough… 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."

Do it again, Dad.

Each sunset on the beach.

Each time our 3 year old giggles.

Each time the breeze blows cooly, or the sun shines warmly.

Each spring when the rains come and the flowers bloom.,

As Shae mentioned to me, perhaps God is truly more like Alanis Morisette in the closing scenes of Dogma, than we realize.