Threads Within is GenOn's new resource to help church leaders support families in everyday faith. Free sample at bottom of this post.

Guest Writer Jennifer Grant
Adult and Children's Author

My neighbor, Ezra, is four years old, and he lives across the hall. A few times a week after daycare, he bangs on my door, clutching two lightsabers and his science kit. When I let him in, he’s already talking, often, these days, about Super Potato, a character who has persuaded him that Brussels sprouts make you fast and strong.

Ezra speaks properly. Every consonant is enunciated like someone who has decided contractions are for people with far less important things to say. When you ask almost anything that might elicit a yes or no answer, he considers it for a moment and then says, "Probably." Would you like some orange juice? Probably. Should we do the volcano experiment before playing Star Wars? Probably. It means “yes,” but leaves room for uncertainty.

His favorite experiment involves baking soda, water, red food coloring, and a shallow dish. He measures the components as carefully as a four-year-old can, and, every time, the fizzing pink volcano that erupts from a small, plastic beaker genuinely surprises him. I can see his delighted response as, from behind his outsized safety goggles, his eyebrows go up like they did the first time we made this happen.

Once, I asked him if he wanted to be a scientist when he grows up. He considered it, and then answered, "Probably." I asked what kind of scientist he’d like to be. Would he study plants? The sun and the moon? Or would he like to be in a lab with materials like this, creating cool experiments. “I will do all the science,” he finally announced.

That's the thing about curiosity at when you’re four, or when you approach life with a beginner’s mind. It doesn't specialize or rule things out. It just wants in on all of it.

Ezra starts pre-K this month. I keep picturing him walking into his classroom for the first time, his name taped on a table he’s never seen, the unfamiliar smell of the room, the new faces of friends whose names he doesn’t yet know. I hope he’ll enter without bracing himself or carrying what we adults too often bring into new rooms. Things like fear of failure or rejection, or, perhaps even worse, the dull dread that we’ve already seen all of this before, predicting what we’ll find, and then, seeing nothing new because our eyes are not open to doing so. Same old, same old. Whatever. Been there; done that.

There’s a line in Lamentations about mercies being new every morning. Not re-newed. New, like everything starts over every single day. You can read that as a metaphor, or, with a more hopeful perspective as a way to approach each day…if you happen to be four, or if you are open with a beginner's mindset, ever on the lookout to be happily surprised, your curiosity fired up about the wonders around us.

So, this is what I want for Ezra as he enters the new school year, and honestly, I want it for myself, too. To keep walking into rooms, eyebrows already halfway up, ready to discover something amazing.

Jennifer Grant is an author and editor in Chicago. She has written several books for adults and for children: The Consider Series is her latest set of picture books for kids. Consider the Night Sky (book three of the series) releases on September 1 and is published by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. Learn more at jennifergrant.com.