Childhood Wonder
Whitstable
In August, I managed to grab a writing retreat in Whitstable to advance my current work-in-progress - a ‘spiritual memoir’ with the working title, ‘Why I Still Believe – Confessions of a Serial Doubter.’ I want to promote my conviction that in faith, as in every other sphere, we learn and grow by asking questions. I hope, on the one hand, to reassure Christians worried about questioning aspects of faith that trouble them; and on the other hand, to tackle the perception that Christians leave their brains at the door of the church.
In Whitstable, I dived into my memories, exploring firstly how childhood experiences made me ‘ready’ (in God’s providence, I believe) to respond to the good news about Jesus when I first heard it. Here’s an extract,
‘My brother and I squatted on the forest floor as my dad heaved over a log to reveal lizards, beetles, woodlice, ants, centipedes and nameless creatures scurrying on multiple limbs into the leaf litter. This is my first memory of a lifelong fascination with nature. The nature ‘file’ in my memory is full of ‘ordinary’ encounters with the wildlife and landscapes of our extraordinary planet. Most of these morph and merge over time but some remain distinct like vivid photos in the mind. Another of these is from our first canal holiday when I was nine. Canal water is almost invariably an opaque greenish-brown but I recall sitting at the ‘pointy end’ staring into clear, sun-beam-lit water which suddenly teemed with medium-sized fish as the bow cut a swathe through their shoal. It probably lasted only a few seconds, but time seemed to slow as the secrets of life beneath the surface were revealed.
This child-like joy and fascination with discovering nature’s ‘secrets’ first-hand is with me to this day, and weekends usually see David and I walking in Epping Forest, enjoying the trees, mosses and lichens, alert to the movement of birds, squirrels and deer. Recently we’ve taken our first forays into snorkelling, which has opened up the wonders beneath the sea’s restless surface.’
When I heard, aged 10, the Bible’s teaching that a Creator God made everything that exists, it made sense. And to this day, when I look at nature in all its fine-tuned precision, it seems much easier to believe it came about through the design of God than through random mutations, however long the timescale of its development. Many people dismiss belief in a divine creator without realising that the ‘natural’ alternative requires just as much faith, if not more. Isn’t it a leap of faith to believe that everything came from nothing without a creator, for no reason; or to believe that nature is self-existent in the same way as God? These are the only options and each is a faith position.
From my earliest childhood to now, when I’m out enjoying the wonders of creation, I have a strong sense of connection with God. I feel I’m sharing with him his affirmation, ‘God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.’ Genesis 1:31.
