Chesterton Tuesdays

From Orthodoxy:

"Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase,
it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets
tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness,
but to a rush of life. 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. The repetition in Nature may
not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE. Heaven may
ENCORE the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and
brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat,
or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal
fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy
has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries,
and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and
again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years,
by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on
the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his
positively last appearance."