Recently, as I sat at my desk analyzing the results of a recent crash test (yep, I crash cars and trucks for a living – wear your seat belt), I had the strangest feeling that I had entered the Twilight Zone.

For a brief second, it felt like I was some impostor trapped inside an engineer’s body faking out the whole world, living out somebody else’s life.

Perhaps in that TZ moment, I had tapped into a deep-seated desire to find my childlike heart once again.

Is this our quest?  To find ourselves wide-eyed and filled with innocent wonder, free and unconstrained, fully able to express ourselves?

I think it’s the hidden desire underneath our relationships, jobs, hobbies, possessions and spiritual musings.  We’re secretly longing to go backwards, a descent back into childlikeness.

But we’ve been molded by the system to become responsible adults.  The lure of the “good life” (whatever that means) comes at us with a thousand hooks, meant to bite in, consume our focus and arrange our lives  – to feel protected, secure, organized, safe.  Yes, many of us have lost this sense of awestruck innocence, but it is quite present deep within, buried under layers and layers of cultural indoctrination, trauma/pain, and unmet expectations… awaiting an awakening.

Responsibility, certainty and careful analysis are often enemies of the fully alive heart, tempting us to live out the lives that culture expects of us. We press “autopilot” and endure an existence marked by quiet desperation. Maybe I was feeling the weight of this as I stared at data plots on my computer screen.

Then I remembered.

In the midst of our responsible lives, Christ comes to flood us with Hope, overflowing with ridiculous dreams once again. He comes with crazy Good News that He calls the Gospel, and reminds us that we are in a Far Bigger Story than the one we have created for ourselves.  Our childlike hearts open in eager expectation, longing like Adam in the Garden for that Holy Breath to infuse us with divine life, fill our heart-eyes with heaven’s light, and help us see through a new set of Love-tinted lenses.

“The glory of God is man, fully alive.”

Irenaeus (2^nd century Greek bishop)