Do It Again

In the film Awakenings — based on a true story — a doctor uses an experimental drug to awaken patients who have spent decades in a catatonic, sleep-like state. The first patient to respond is a man named Leonard, who has been essentially absent from his own life for thirty years.

In one scene, Leonard calls the doctor in the middle of the night — he has to talk to him, right now. The doctor rushes over. And Leonard, barely able to contain himself, holds up a newspaper and says:

"Read the newspaper. See what they say — all bad, it's all bad. People have forgotten what life is about. They've forgotten what it is to be alive. They need to be reminded. They need to be reminded about what they have and what they can lose. What I feel is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life, the wonderment of life!"

Somewhere along the way, most of us lose that. Not all at once — gradually, imperceptibly. The wonder gets worn down by familiarity. The gift gets obscured by routine. We stop noticing.

The philosopher G.K. Chesterton wrote about children and their insistence on repetition — "Do it again! Do it again!" — and suggested that what looks like simple immaturity might actually be closer to the divine:

"It may be that God makes every daisy separately but has never gotten 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."

Jesus said that the kingdom of God belongs to those who receive it as a child. Wide-eyed. Wondering. Awake to the gift of being alive.

What would it take today to see your life the way Leonard saw his — as something precious, something worth exclaiming over, something you don't want to sleep through?

Prayer: Loving God, wake us up. Open our eyes to the gifts we have grown too familiar to notice — the ordinary miracles of this day, this life, this breath. Give us back something of that wide-eyed wonder that greets the world as the gift it is. And may that wonder draw us closer to you — the one who makes every daisy, and has never once grown tired of it. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

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