The Joy of Bubbles

Each month we celebrate the birthday of each child that was born during that particular month in one big party.  Today was such a day.  For those of you unfamiliar with the way we celebrate birthdays at In Step, we call each child up and announce the age that they are turning.  When everyone has been called, we sing “Happy Birthday” to them.  The “birthday” boys and girls, who are old enough then serve cake and ice cream to the rest of the children, then get their own.  Then, we go outside into the yard and the adults (Mama Mary, Mama Carla, Madam Beth Ann and me, usually) blow bubbles for the kids to chase and see who can pop them.  Usually a little one gets knocked down in the excitement, but no one gets seriously hurt.  The next wave of bubbles usually makes a kid forget any offense committed against them.

There is one little guy named Fred, who just loves bubble time.  He runs around chasing the bubbles laughing the whole time.  Fred has a great laugh.  It is a laugh that comes from deep within his soul.  It doesn’t take much for Fred to get that laugh going either.  Any fun play activity can set him off.  It has gotten to the point where the other kids don’t notice, or pay attention anymore.  That is a sad thing.

It is a sad thing, not because the other kids have lost interest in the bubbles.  They have lost interest in Fred’s laugh.  There is innocence to it, and for them it is just another occurrence.  It is just Fred being Fred.  But, what if it was something more?

I just finished reading Rob Bell’s new book “What We Talk About When We Talk About God.”  Love him or hate him, Bell generates thought and discussion about Christianity and faith.  In the book, he talks about looking past the mundane and seeing God in everything.  In the West, a lot of us live in the mundane.  We forget to look beyond the moment and see that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.  In most circumstances, we get up, do our work, go home, go to sleep, and repeat and repeat and repeat.

If we blow bubbles for kids, it is just blowing bubbles.  We don’t participate in the enjoyment of them.  We don’t often marvel at how they float, sometimes out of our grasp and hover over our heads, and at the last minute change direction and come back to earth so that we can pop them. Almost like they are playing a game with us.

Children have a sense of wonder at so many things, and we adults take them for granted.  Eventually kids start to take them for granted, the way the rest of the kids at the home have taken Fred’s laugh for granted.  They are no longer entertained by it.  They don’t laugh with him anymore.  They don’t roll on the ground with him.  What if Fred’s laugh contains the presence of God?  What if God is laughing through Fred to teach us that we need to be enjoying the small things?

I hope that Fred never loses the joy of bubbles.  I hope that his laughter will always come out in the simple things of life.  I hope that we can teach the kids to once again see the sacred in the mundane.  I want to learn to find God in everything.  I want to see him behind every corner.  I pray that you will see the wonder in simple things.

Next month I want to post a video of Fred’s laugh from the next “Happy Birthday”.