A student from India was adjusting to life in Washington, D.C. He had never experienced snow before.

So after hearing about a snow warning on the evening news, he set his alarm for 3am. Sure enough, in the middle of the night, he got up and went outside to jump up and down in the snow and make snow angels.

Like a 3-year old.

In fact, he was having such a good time that he almost got frostbite. He said he didn’t realize snow was so cold or so wet!

We adults have a way of taking the technicolour beauty of God’s world and coating it in boorish gray. It’s a way of closing our eyes to beauty. Just because we get used to something—like a snowfall or thunderstorm or the way a weeping willow tree looks as it sways in the evening breeze—we move it from the “amazing” category to the “normal” one.

But that’s just crazy.

G.K. Chesterton marvels at how the sun and moon appear every day. What if it wasn’t just mere repetition? he wondered. What if we keep seeing the sun and moon every day because God is shouting “Do it again!” He calls it a “theatrical encore.”

Today, just notice. Notice the non-verbal poetry around you. Notice the gift that is life overflowing. What if the “normal” cycles and rhythms around you are a theatrical encore?

Just notice. And smile.

And know that you too are a part of the beauty that is designed to bless the world.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God “has made everything beautiful in its time.” The true geniuses of our world are the ones who keep noticing.

By Matthew Ruttan