I believe in big things: God and ministering angels, family and FRIENDS (of the Rachel, Ross, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, and Joey variety), the wilderness and civic engagement. When I think about my beliefs, though, I keep remembering the little things: moments so small I don't know how I can believe in them so enormously. I believe in the purity of the day I went running with my dog and we found half a fragile robin’s egg and I cradled it gingerly all the way home, trying to keep the rain off it without crushing its tiny walls in my palm.
On study abroad in London, I wandered into a local charity shop and found a pair of Nikes, size 8.5, from the coveted Liberty x Nike collection, half price. I’d wanted shoes like these for months. When I wear them now, I say, “I know God doesn’t care about shoes, but he cares about how happy they make me.” It’s become a running nearly-joke: “I know God doesn’t care about pie, but…”, “I know God doesn’t care about hot springs, but…” But doesn’t he? These tiny things I believe in, like a robin’s egg in my hand and my dog panting happily by my feet, are His. And I believe in them quite as wholly as I believe in God.
My desktop background is from Roald Dahl, a bit of a wizard with words. “And above all,” he wrote, “watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.” Glittering eyes are the kind of eyes I think my dog must have when she sees a stick and sees what I don’t: running across the yard and bringing it back to her people and playfully fighting for it with her cousin and rolling in the grass after. (Listen, I just consider my dog the eighth natural wonder of the world. Don’t all dog owners?) My cousin must have glittering eyes when he looks at a trampoline and sees a pirate ship and an airplane and a school bus. My roommate must look at European history with glittering eyes because when she tells stories from her textbook, Austrian politics in the 17th century sound swashbuckling and intriguing, dynamic and dramatic.
So I believe in glittering eyes. And I believe that God cares about my Liberty x Nike charity shop shoes. And I definitely believe He cares about pie. He believes in robins, and their tiny blue eggshells, and in girls going running with their dogs, and in gently rainy days. He believes in wonder, and so I do, too, and maybe that’s what this all comes to. My definition of wonder is synonymous with His definition of tender mercies, of miracles. Maybe I believe so enormously in such tiny things because I see something vast in them: cosmos and eternity and a good God guiding it all.