My wife has a sign that she puts up every year with the Christmas decorations. It says, “May you never be too grown up to search the skies on Christmas Eve.”

What happens to wonder as we grow up?

Christian author Drew Dyck wrote a book called Yawning at Tigers: You Can’t Tame God so Stop Trying. The point is to help people recapture the wonder of God. 

Drew told the story of friends who adopted two children from a country in Africa. They were loving parents and excited to have this new addition to their three biological children, but the transition wasn’t easy. The kids had lived on the streets and then in an orphanage.  

The deprivation they’d experienced kept manifesting itself.

Once they finished playing with a toy, they might break it to make sure no one else could play with it.

At mealtimes, they would gorge themselves. If they saw the milk or cereal running low, they’d get nervous. “Is there plenty, Mommy?” they would ask. Despite their parents’ assurances, they would drink milk until they were sick. The parents would take them to the store and point out row after row of milk. They’d say, “See, there is so much milk, we will never run out.”

Drew says we’re like those children.

“We’re raised on the streets too. No, not like those kids, but out in the world, where people jockey for position; where the strong take advantage of the weak. 

We learn to look out for number one.

The wonder gets beaten out of us.

But then a miracle happens. God adopts us. We become part of his family. We find ourselves loved. 

We’re introduced to a whole new way of living, where the last are first and the meek are blessed.

But old habits die hard. So, we drink all the milk.

We wonder if God really will provide. Not just possessions, but meaning and love.

Drew says, “I’m convinced that there’s really one big question at the heart of life and that our answer to that question will ripple throughout our time on earth and into eternity.

The question is simply this: “Are you going to believe that God loves you?”

Christmas is proof that he does.