no, you didn’t miss service

Christmas day.

I was missing Kansas City, and my iPod was completely out of juice. So I started scouring my parents’ house for some music that I might find decent, only to come up with The Best Of DooWop which was hidden behind Neil Diamond’s Christmas Hits. I finally came across Isaac’s talk on Wonder which I had burned to CD and mailed to my mom a couple months ago. Let me recreate the mood:

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. —G. K. Chesterton in "Orthodoxy" [1909]

As I listened to Isaac’s words again, I was reminded of a story from last July. I was visiting my best friend’s crazy family with her in southern Missouri, and we were in the middle of supper. Not just any supper, but Sally’s birthday supper. We were at Sweetwater Farm, sitting around multiple tables in a farmhouse with no windows—only screens. As we sang Happy Birthday to Sally and chowed down on leftovers from the Fourth Of July Cookout we’d had the day before, a thunderstorm raged outside, spitting water on us intermittently as we enjoyed the light show and the thunder. Cue Caroline’s story.

Caroline was a woman I’d met just the day before, a vibrant and loud tiny little thing with a husband and four children with French names. She lived near New Orleans (this was when New Orleans still existed in all its magic) in a house with a backyard that she frequently confined her four vibrant and loud children to. Her story was of one evening when the kids were particularly making her wish that she’d chosen a life of celibacy. The day had been ridiculous, culminating with a supper at which no one would eat what was put in front of them, complete with screaming and poking and all sorts of usual sibling fighting. Her husband promptly walked off the set to his office after eating, leaving her with a frustration level about to boil over. She told her kids, “Look. I’m going to do the dishes, and I want to do them in complete peace and quiet. Go outside, and I don’t want ANY of you to talk to me until I’m done.”

They all ran outside and as she started to relieve her stresses in a sinkful of dishwater, she decided that she’d just take extra long to finish the dishes that particular evening. Just as she was starting to return to a level of normalcy, her middle son—the next to youngest—entered the kitchen determined. “Mom, I know you said you didn’t want to be bothered, but you HAVE to come see this RIGHT NOW.”

She took a deep breath and said, “I told you I didn’t want to be talked to.”

“I know,” he said, still determined, “but this is REALLY IMPORTANT.”

She dried her hands and let out an audible sigh of frustration. She followed her son out the door and into the backyard where she saw her only daughter dangling from a Y in the tree branches from her foot. Caroline started down the steps quickly yelling, “Honey, it’s okay! I’m coming to get you!” Her son grabbed her by the back of her t-shirt and stopped her. Pointing beyond his sister he said, “Not HER, Mom, the sunset.”

Wonder. May we never overlook a sunset ever again. If God says, “Do it again,” every evening, we’d do well to take notice.