Waking up to God's Kingdom

I love spending time with Adrian when he wakes up from his naps. I would probably love the morning times a little more if it weren't for the fact that I am trying to wake up myself. Usually Adrian likes to take his time waking up from a nap. Sometimes he'll wake up crying in a way that says "I don't want to wake up yet!" When I pick him up, he settles into my arms and I get to help him rediscover the world around him.

Sometimes, what I like to do is to sit with him in a chair by the window and let him look at the world outside. He will just sit there staring out at the movement of the trees and the sound of the breeze. At the house where we are living, there is a small creek that runs through the backyard. You can almost always spot a squirrel or a rabbit and all kinds of birds. I even spotted what looked like a beaver once. Adrian will point to his special find and say "do", which I think means, "Look at that!" It is so fun to see him discover a world in motion that has been sitting outside the door all this time.

A couple of days ago I was sitting with Adrian after one of his naps and I thought about how hard it is for us to acknowledge the realities around us. It seems I spend most of my time living within my own reality - and when it comes time to wake up from it, I'm not too happy about it. I thought of the evening when Jesus taught Nicodemus that he must be born again in order to see the Kingdom of God (John 3). Perhaps living the Kingdom-life is a bit like waking up from a deep sleep. We become aware of an entire world at our fingertips that we never even noticed before. We notice the beauty of it in a way that makes us say, "Look at that!" and we can tell that God's had his hand in it.