We’ve been sick with colds sense arriving back in the States. It’s been an interesting process of coming home as we settle into the uncertainty of what lies ahead. We continue to remind one another that if we are to become anything like the people we desire to be in thirty years, then we need to be making choices that reflect those same principles today. One of the characteristics we desire to emulate at 60 is to be faithful in all things.
13/1- 50º F/10º C a little different feel than the weather we left in Belfast. It’s almost as if Aslan returned to Narnia. Sorry, we’ve been listening to the Chronicles of Narnia in honor of being in C.S. Lewis birthplace and providing entertainment for our down times at home.
14/1-
19/1- ‘The Last Nappy’
There’s something resolute about putting the last nappy from a culture on your child. Pragmatically there is nothing to it. The contents are just as smelly as they are when they were in the previous continent. It’s purpose does not change when you cross through border control. In fact the brands that have been available to us are fairly similar. It is a change in the routine to dispose of, in this case our last ‘Tesco Nappy’, to dawn a ‘Pampers Diaper’.
A certain finality comes over me when this transition takes place. I have had a cushion of time to surrender to the evils of jet-lag and come to terms with what side of the road I should be driving on. This morning was the moment...the fateful time when I prepared Padraig for his nap and allowed my heart to settle in to the reality that we are back in the states and only God knows for how long.
My resolve is not to succumb to the conversation as to whether it is more bitter or sweet because it is both. My hope rests in that we desire to surrender each day to a loving God trusting that there is purpose within it. Our prayer for the past three months is that in a new culture God would graciously open our eyes to see the beauty He is invoking upon life around us.
Our return does not change our prayer. We see cause for a greater conviction that beauty is not in the unknown adventure alone, but also resides in celebrating the routine. I wouldn’t mind writing more, but G.K. Chesterton wrote it better than I ever will when he considers the fairy tale nature of accepting facts and routine to be forgone conclusions. In his book ‘Orthodoxy’ he romanticizes the mundane.
Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that
the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising.
His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush
of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children,
when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child
kicks his 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
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.
The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be
a theatrical ENCORE. -G.K. Chesterton: The Ethics of Elfland
Cheers to the last nappy, Hooray for the routine!
