Our Father is Younger than We: Sermon Illustration Tuesday

If you read through G.K. Chesterton’s writings, it will not be long before you recognize the recurring theme of joy. Joy, Chesterton believed, ought to be a central experience of the one who realizes the absurdity of his life as a gift.

What should have been a terminal diagnosis of death and condemnation has been rescued by the ultimate gift-giver, God himself, who gave up His son to death that we might experience eternal life.

In this memorable passage, Chesterton reminds us that the God of the universe is the God of all joy, who gives us a small picture of what this joy looks like through the singular experience of…children.

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. 

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 daises like; 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.

Taken from G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.

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