Our Lord said we must become as little children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. One thing is quite evident when you sit about with children: they love repetition.
They like to repeat games. They like to have the same books re-read to them. They love to hear the same story repeated over and over again, while laughing with each rendering, as if it were the first time they had heard it. This (repetitive) aspect of child’s play can become tiresome to adults weighed down with the cares and concerns of the world. Having long since left the games of childhood, adults often wonder why children take delight in repetition. G.K. Chesterton reflected on this aspect of children, and related it to the nature of God:
“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 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.” (G. K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy)
“…children are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.”
“God is strong enough to exult in monotony.”
“…God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.”
“Our Father is younger than we.”
God is ‘fierce and free’ and does as He wills. He is young and never grows tired of creating, of holding the world (holding us!) in existence.
What happy thoughts!
•SCF
