Childlike Dominion
Today at lunch, Noah turned to me with two strips of string cheese hanging out of his mouth and down each cheek. I told him he looked like a walrus. He asked what a walrus is, so I showed him a picture, and he laughed my favorite Noah laugh, completely delighted by the absurdity of the creature on the screen, and I laughed too.
“I like him. He’s funny. Hi, Walrus! I will come see you someday!”
I wonder what life might spring up in our world if we held our mandate from our Creator to “fill and subdue” (Gen. 1) with the posture of a child, full of joy, delight, awe, and curiosity.
A few weeks ago, as I tiptoed down the hallway in the early morning dark, I caught a glimpse of the full moon—brighter than I can ever remember seeing it—over the mountains though the skylight in our bathroom. And I whispered, “Alleluia,” as my eyes filled with tears. I tell you, I could not help myself.
I think often of the exchange in C.S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader between Ramandu, a Narnian “star at rest,” and Eustace Scrubb:
“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”
“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”
Children love to know how things work, and their need for answers is urgent (I know—just ask my Google search history!), but their curiosity comes from a place of joy and wonder, not a need to control. I think this is why we see them approach the world both wildly and reverently. They know it’s a gift. And they share it instinctively and with joy, like a handful of dandelions.
Jesus knew this too, it seems. As I watch Jesus interact with the creation that he holds together (as he learns his trade as carpenter, when he turns the water into wine, stops for a drink of water, offers fish and bread to thousands, considers the lilies, carries the weight of the wooden beams of his cross, to name just a few I’ve been turning over in my head), I think we can begin to imagine what it might look like to “have dominion” (Ps. 8) without utterly dominating.
This world is a gift, and we can know him more fully through what he has made. Sharing with God in cultivating the beauty of what he has made will be the deeply good work of eternity, an essential means of “knowing and enjoying him forever.” Even as creation groans along with us for our shared redemption, we join in the work of the Kingdom.
“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning