The Joy of a Child

I’ve just returned from spending a week with my 1½-year-old grandson (and a few days with his newborn brother).
Those days made me appreciate—once again—the small things in life that we take for granted.
What fun it was to show him animals at the zoo that he had seen only in picture books or on TV. In one of the monkey exhibits, a paste had been put on the inside glass that the monkeys would lick off, and my grandson—as did many other children—took great joy in putting his finger or his mouth up to the monkey’s mouth.
I watched his excitement at being close to airplanes as they took off and landed.
He laughed when his granddad put his favorite ball into a basketball net, where it got stuck. Granddad found a stick to push the ball up and out of the net, which got more laughter—and, of course, pleas to do it again. And I was grateful that he didn’t laugh when Grandma took several tries to put the ball into the basket.
Do you remember when you got excited at seeing those big planes fly? Or the first time you saw “wild” animals in a zoo or at a circus? The success of putting the ball in the net, or the joy of going down a slide?
I was also thrilled to hold my new grandson within an hour of his birth—something I did not get to experience with my first two grandchildren. With all three of my children’s babies, I’ve been in awe that they are “flesh of my flesh.” I enjoy just watching them sleep, holding their tiny hands, stroking their soft heads.
These times are even more poignant because they occur far less frequently than we would like—the children live over a thousand miles away, so the visits are too far apart and too soon over. But I treasure each moment as it comes.
The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy (Psalm 126:3, NIV).