Joy and Wonder
January 31, 2021
There’s something magical about snow. It’s ice, frozen water, but instead of being hard and brittle, it’s soft and fluffy. It floats down gently, blown about by every gust of wind, landing softly, falling from untold heights to rest silently on the ground.
It’s little wonder that kids (and some adults) love it so much. It turns a dull and dreary winter day into a playground of wonder and excitement—sledding, snowball fights, forts, snowmen. It’s tiring and exhausting to walk or run through it, to play in it, but the fun makes it worth it.
Wednesday we took Stella out for some sledding down the small hill in our backyard. We’ve tried it before, but Stella was still too small to manage well enough to have fun. Mallory and I alternated taking rides down the hill to get a nice, packed, slick spot, then Mallory took Stella down a few times, and finally we put Stella on the sled by herself. Apparently she can manage going downhill, but if you try to drag the sled along on a flat spot, she falls off sideways. And she’s maybe a bit small for her snowsuit yet, so she ends up falling right on her face. Luckily she’s resilient, so she didn’t cry and was game to go again.
Joy and wonder is less about the falling, and more about the way Stella’s face lights up as she goes sliding down the hill by herself, or gets pulled around on the sled (before she falls off). Joy and wonder, not in the fanciest new gadget, but in this natural phenomenon called snow, and the fun it allows us to have. Joy and wonder, inciting kids to get out and play, despite the risk of injury and cold.
Perhaps that’s the power of joy and wonder—it incites us to take risks that normally wouldn’t be worth it. How many kids refuse to go outside and play in 30 degree weather? But throw snow into the mix, and few won’t go outside for at least a little bit.
Perhaps that’s a lesson we adults can take from kids. Perhaps we need to be more keen to see joy and wonder in life, especially in our faith. I suspect God should bring joy and wonder to our lives, inciting us to follow him, in spite of the risk.
And let’s not lie to ourselves, there’s lot’s of risk to serving God. The call of discipleship is to leave our lives behind, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. Die to self. Leave father and mother and brother and sister. Follow Jesus to rejection, scorn, persecution, suffering, death. How can we put up with that risk? For one, find joy and wonder in the God who created all of life with its simple pleasures, even if it’s just sledding down a hill. Life is filled with simple joys, and perhaps we will grow to see even the suffering we face as disciples as joy, recognizing that the one true good in life is living as God would have us live.
—John Coffey
