Seek, Find, and Wonder

My daughter's birthday was last week. So was my anniversary. My two girls and me. It has made me think of life, as I always do. Not just what has happened, and not what will happen, but what is happening. Because today is connected. Yesterday is a vapor and tomorrow is a shadow that the sun (right now) casts on the sidewalk in front of us. Learning from the past, planning for the future, and living in the moment should make us hold loosely our life as it swirls like water with the oil of wonder. One day it will all be caught up together. No separation. One day. The wonder being the hope of Christ, the life we walk day by day as ragamuffins. Abraham Joshua Heshel prayed,

Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe. Delight me to see how your Christ plays in ten thousand places...to the Father through the features of men's faces. Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all.

The way that Jesus led his disciples was a context full of wonder and stretching beyond the boundaries of what His followers knew. What those ragamuffin disciples had to offer that high-context society of Pharisees and Sadducees was completely different than what scrolls or oral tradition offered in that time. The knowledge that they encountered was with the living breathing Word made flesh. They were completely 'off the grid.' They were in the land of wonder. Wonder was their reality.

I came across this video, and it made me think of the kind of life that I want for my girls. The kind of life that I can encourage and model.

So as I look at the playful, compassionate, and sometimes wonder filled, blue and hazel eyes of my daughter, I see a woman who one day will splash in rivers, run through the rain, swim with sea creatures, fall in love, have her heart broken with compassion and sorrow, and dream...when I look in her eyes, I see her mother.