Here’s a journal entry from one of our last days in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
I’m sitting in a second floor window at Starbucks next to a big window overlooking the street and the sidewalk near the Tha Phae Gate. I’ve been watching a little boy chase some pigeons. He looks so free. His dad will occasionally chase after him if it looks like he’s going too near the road and his mom is chasing after him with a camera trying to take pictures. But neither parent interrupts unless they absolutely need to. And it seems the child doesn’t even know they’re there.
He fell once and his mom looked at his knee, but she didn’t coddle him and he didn’t seem to want that. He just wanted to get back to chasing the pigeons.
He eventually stopped running and was able to feed the pigeons. It looked fun. But he’d get scared or overwhelmed sometimes and try to hide behind grandma. But he still really wanted to feed the birds.
It reminds me of how when we finally catch up to and face whatever we’ve been chasing and how it can be scary. For a brief moment we wonder if it was worth the chase. But really the chase was the fun part. It’s beautiful and free and flowing.
Nothing else mattered to that boy. Not the busy city streets or the passersby. Not even the military men lined up by the gate. He was fully present in the moment. He didn’t even realize that while he delighted in the chase, his parents were cherishing and delighting in his use of freedom. They tried to capture it in pictures so they could forever remember the joy of their son in that moment.
Life is beautiful.
I love how we can see God even in complete strangers.
Watching those parents love their little boy so well simply by letting him experience freedom was so refreshing to me. They never once left him alone. They just let him be and delighted in the joy he was so lost in.
I can just imagine Jesus doing the same thing for each of us. He delights in us and gives us the opportunity to live in such freedom.
We just have to stay present in the moment and delight in the chase.
