Do it again, Dad!

If you have children you will probably appreciate this little quote from G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy.  The quote was in my reading for the course I’m taking right now.

He’s saying that he believes God loves routine – regularity and predictability.  Of course, God likes to surprise us too; but in context Chesterton is suggesting that the predictability of the universe (which makes it understandable through science) should not surprise us:

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy.  A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.  Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.  They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.  It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.  It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.