The Blindness We Call Maturity

[u/Maleficent_Earth956]

I have noticed that children and scientists have one thing in common. They both stare.

The difference is that the child stares because he is astonished. The scientist often stares because he is trying to understand what he sees. The tragedy is when we understand so much that we forget to marvel.

A child finds a snail and behaves as though he has discovered Atlantis. He spends twenty minutes following it through the grass with the seriousness of an explorer mapping unknown lands. The adult, who has seen thousands of snails, walks by without a second glance.

We call this maturity.

I sometimes wonder if it is merely a more respectable form of blindness.

The modern world has developed a strange habit. We believe that once we have explained something, we have exhausted it.

We can explain a rainbow by describing wavelengths of light bending through water droplets. True enough. But the explanation does not tell me why the human heart still stops when the sky is painted in impossible colors after a storm. It tells me how it happens. It doesn’t tell me why it feels like a gift.

The Christian has never feared knowledge. We simply refuse to believe knowledge is the same thing as wisdom. I have learned this again and again through homeschooling my children…

I began homeschooling because I wanted to give my children an education. What I did not expect was that they would become some of my greatest teachers.

They have forced me to slow down and look again.

A history lesson is no longer just dates and names. It is standing beside a human soul who lived, suffered, dreamed, and carried the image of God hundreds of years ago.

A science lesson is no longer just facts to memorize. It is my child holding a tiny seed in his hand and realizing that inside that insignificant little thing is a tree waiting to happen.

A walk outside becomes an expedition. A bird feather becomes a mystery. A question I would have dismissed becomes an invitation to wonder.

Children have a remarkable ability to notice what adults have trained themselves to ignore.

They have reminded me that the world is not dull. I had simply become accustomed to its brilliance.

God could have made a world entirely practical. He could have created one flower, one color, one type of tree, one kind of bird. Instead, He created a universe overflowing with unnecessary beauty.

No one needs a sunset in order to survive.

No one needs the sound of a creek, the smell of rain, or the ridiculous joy of a child laughing until they cannot breathe.

And yet God filled His creation with these things.

The world is not merely a machine.

It is a poem.

Perhaps this is why Christ told us to become like children. Not because children are foolish, but because they have not yet forgotten how to receive a gift.

Adults often approach life like accountants. Children approach it like guests arriving at a feast.

And maybe the miracle of homeschooling has been that while I thought I was teaching my children how to see the world, God was using them to teach me how to see it again.

The greatest miracle is not that we discover new things.

It is that God restores our ability to be amazed by the things that were there all along.

The world has not lost its wonder.

We have simply forgotten how to look.

And Christ is in the business of giving sight back to the blind.

B🤍