Become Like Little Children

When Jesus said, "Become like little children," I think one of the traits he had in mind was children's sense of wonder. I remember our little son once chortling from the back seat as we drove by our house, "Look, there's our tree!" All he could see was the top of the trees but he recognized our tree as something special.

And if anyone understood the attitude of wonder in children, it was G.K. Chesterton. Here's what he wrote in his essay, Sandals and Simplicity:

[I]n nothing is the child so righteously childlike, in nothing does he exhibit more accurately the sounder order of simplicity, than in the fact that he sees everything with a simple pleasure, even the complex things....To the child the tree and the lamp-post are as natural and as artificial as each other; or rather, neither of them are natural but both supernatural. For both are splendid and unexplained. The flower with which God crowns the one, and the flame with which Sam the lamplighter crowns the other are equally of the gold of fairy-tales.

If you want to understand the simple things of life (which are usually the most profound), spend time conversing with children.