Crawling Again

Yesterday, when  Joshua dropped yet another penny into our praise jar with a clank, Hannah rolled her eyes and muttered, “I guess I’m just gonna have to start crawling again if I want to find any more pennies!”

Hannah’s drama may be hyperbolizing the obvious, but our ongoing hunt for pennies is teaching us this: the child who finds the most copper treasure is the one who moves closest to the ground. Without a doubt, four foot Joshua has spotted more penny gleams than any of his siblings who tower above him.

Crawling may not produce anything but holes in our jeans, but adjusting the posture of our hearts will indeed breed wonder. In his book, Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton  proclaims, “How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it!”

Though Chesterton said it eloquently, God said it first through the pen of the apostle Paul: Christ himself became stunningly smaller when He stooped into our world and adopted the posture of a servant (Philippians 2). As a mom who longs to spot gleams of wonder in my world, I would be wise to bend my knees and study the view with a humble heart. When I do, I may spy a sparkling copper coin still hiding beneath the couch. And when I pick up that simple cent and turn my thank you into a prayer, I may find that God’s favorite coin is the currency of praise!

“I used to think that God’s gifts were on shelves one above the other, and that the taller we grew in Christian character the easier we would reach them. I find no that God’s gifts are on shelves one beneath the other, and that it is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower, and that we have to go down, always down, to get his best gifts.” -F.B. Meyer (as quoted in Anne Voskamp’s 1000 Gifts).

The Overflow:  Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.  James 1:17