an elephant has fallen through the roof.

There are those people in the world – they seem to make up the vast majority, if you ask me – who, when something significant or out-of-the-ordinary happens, ask

“what do we do about it?”

“how did this come to be?”

and other logical, pertinent, practical type questions that are expected of humans who are busy developing, understanding and moving forward.

But, living among these logical, practical, expected humans are another breed entirely. Those that ask less-expected and (to them) more important questions, like

“what does it mean?”

“could it be?...”

"what if?..."

I am one of those people. I can’t help it -  it’s the way my brain wanders.

I’m reading The Magicians Elephant, in which, after an elephant crashes through the roof of an opera house and lands on a woman, the town of Baltese is alive with all sorts of expected questions like “what do we do with this elephant?” “whose fault is it?”

But there is one policeman who, as he walks home and watches the lamplighter bring the city into warm ambiance, wonders 

“where is the elephant’s real home?” 

“why did it come here? Does it have a mission?” 

“Could it be that he will bring his friends and soon a whole zoo will drop through the opera house ceiling?” 

His mind races and swirls and dips, diving through the imaginative possibilities of this elephant’s arrival.

I think there will be those people who scoff at my book because there is a great deal of it that deals with simple wonder. What if Jesus was like this? What if Heaven is like this?

To some people, these seem like silly questions because they have no answer and they do nothing to solve the more important issues at hand:

“what do we do about it?”

“how did this come to be?”

But, if you ask me, when it comes to things like Jesus, Eternity, Salvation and Grace, there are the things we know:

Jesus died so we wouldn’t have to.

Eternity can be spent with or without God.

Salvation is free and everlasting.

Grace is the best thing that has been extended to us and that we can extend to others.

An elephant has fallen through the roof.

And after these things, there are not many more solid facts to uncover. The majority of the people in the world will spend their days asking logical and practical questions about these simple, unalterable facts, filling up books and conference halls, never getting much closer to an answer than the generations before them.

But the poets among us, the wonderers, the dreamers and the children will ask:

“What will we look like in Heaven?”

“What was Jesus like when He was tired?”

“Are there whole other galaxies of people who worship God in completely different ways than we do?”

These questions don’t get us any more answers than the logical, practical questions of the vast majority do. But they point to a God who is more majestic, breathtaking, fascinating and beautiful than our logic and practicality can contain. They evoke a sense of wonder. 

And I’ve heard it said that there is no better worship than wonder.

So I think it will be ok if there is some scoffing. I think we need both types of people and both types of questions.