I love going to the zoo. Wichita has one of the top ten zoos in the country, and I could go there every day and never get tired of it. But it’s one thing to go by yourself. It’s something else to go with a friend. And it’s another thing entirely to take an almost-2-year-old girl along with you.
That’s what happened to me this past weekend. I got to go to the zoo with one of my best friends/sisters and her adorable daughter, who I usually refer to as Hoochild (she used to be Baby Hoo). Now that is an experience.
Just think about it. Put yourself in a toddler’s shoes. Try to see the world from a toddler’s perspective. There’s something new to learn every day. There’s something awesome to explore every moment. Grown-ups get jaded. We’ve seen everything, done everything, gone everywhere. There’s nothing that can spark that feeling of wonder that we used to feel.
Or maybe we’ve just forgotten what it feels like to stand in awe.
Hoochild on a stroll at the Sedgwick County Zoo, Wichita, KS
Today’s verse is Psalm 40:5.
O Lord my God, you have performed many wonders for us.
Your plans for us are too numerous to list.
You have no equal.
If I tried to recite all your wonderful deeds,
I would never come to the end of them.
When was the last time you saw a miracle? Honestly, they happen every day. I think we grown-ups are just too busy to notice them. For us to pay attention to a miracle, it has to be something so enormous, so huge, so massive that we could never have accomplished it on our own. Right?
But how many of us can make a sunrise? How many of us can turn the wheat golden overnight? How many of us can turn a blossom into an apricot? There are so many things in life that just happen that we take for granted, because they always happen. If it’s impossible for us to accomplish and it happens anyway, it’s still a miracle, regardless of how frequently it happens.
It’s easy to overlook the “small” miracles too because they aren’t the miracles we want. We ask for miracles. We ask to win the lottery. We ask to get away with a lie. We ask not to get caught. And we promise all sorts of things if God could just make this one miracle happen. And when He doesn’t give us our way, we give up on Him. We start thinking that He doesn’t do miracles anymore.
No, friends. That’s not the case. God does wonders every moment of every day. He’s so busy doing miracles that we don’t have time to list them all, but if we have our eyes shut, we’ll never see them.
Are you tired right now? Is today going to be one of those killer days where you don’t get a break and where everything just seems to go wrong? Is today the day you could really use a miracle?
Try looking at life from a toddler’s eyes. Think about a little girl who recognized a real live sheep for the first time and put two and two together and knew it said, “Baa!” (And then spent the rest of the time at the farm exhibit shouting “Baa!” in the faces of every sheep she encountered.)
That’s what wonder looks like. That’s what awe feels like. Discovery. Like standing in the sunrise after a thunderstorm.
Look out your window. What do you see? Clouds? Birds flying? Sun shining? Grass growing? None of that could happen without God.
It’s not that God has stopped doing miracles. We’ve just stopped looking for them. And we’ve told ourselves that nothing God does can impress us anymore. We’ve replaced the wonder at God’s creativity with science. And the science isn’t wrong. But is a flower any less beautiful because you can identify pistil from stamen?
So stop being so grown up today. Take a walk and look for a miracle. Maybe the only miracle you’ll see is a “small” one, but a small miracle is still impossible for us.
Always Peachy 