the heart and the bottle

I recently picked up a book that I knew I just had to have. You know how sometimes you just know it needs to be yours even though you haven't read it yet? Yep, it was like that. And even though I did read the whole book right there in the bookshop, it just confirmed that I had to take it home with me. Sometimes there are purchases that are head buys and sometimes there are purchases that are heart buys. This one was a heart buy.

It's about a little girl (one like any other) whose head was filled with the curiosities of the world. She took delight in finding new things. Her imagination defied reality and her world with full of intrigue and wonderment. One day she found a chair and put her heart in a bottle for safekeeping. And nothing was the same. She forgot about the stars and her wondering and the curiosities of life. Her bottle became heavy but at least her heart was safe. She never noticed these things until she met someone smaller and curious about the world. But she didn't know how to answer her without her heart. So she tried to take her heart out of the bottle. But couldn't. She no longer remembered. If not for someone smaller and still curious about the world.  And the heart was put back where it came from and the chair was no longer empty.


How simply beautiful. I am struck with the fact the childhood is truly magical. So full of wonder, curiosity, joy, intrigue, simplicity and infinite possibilities. Ever stop to consider why children always ask "why?" so often? Because anything could be. There are no hard facts.  Nothing beyond the limits of their imagination.

Have we lost our curiosity? Our wonderment at the world? The sense of the infinite realm of possibilities? Doesn't God say that anything is possible with Him? Have we limited His potential because we have limited our understandings to the fallible physical world around us? The one where we are constantly disappointed. The one where it's hard to see the beautiful things while peering into the harsh light of day. The one where sorrow often outweighs joy. The one where hardship is normal and ease almost completely out of reach. Do we need to take a step back and realize that we've lost something and as hard as we try, we can't get that bottle to open? Maybe we need to humble ourselves and ask someone whose sense of the world is far more expansive and limitless to open it for us. And maybe if we choose that, then our hearts will be put back where they came from and our chair won't be so empty anymore. Only the bottle will.