Running Through Dinosaurs

We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

—2 Corinthians 10:5

For our son Henry’s seventh birthday, we loaded up the car with his best friends and headed to the Brookfield Zoo. It has an amazing exhibition of animatronic dinosaurs—machines that look and sound like dinosaurs. You walk through the bears and the tigers and the kangaroos, and then you walk through the dinosaurs, arching their backs, breathing and growling.

Henry had been looking forward to it for ages. When we finally arrived at the dinosaurs, the boys were wriggling with excitement. They sprinted through the exhibition, yelping, dragging one another on to the next one, the next one, the next one. They reached the end in record time.

“How could you be done already?” we asked. “Don’t you want to see it again? Or look at each one up close?” They didn’t. They were too wound up, too excited about the dinosaurs to actually experience the dinosaurs.

I run through the dinosaurs all the time. I miss things that really matter to me because I’m caught up in my own head, having imaginary conversations, forecasting imaginary disasters. I want to be where I am and be fully there. I don’t want to miss any more dinosaurs.