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# Do It Again
- URL: https://www.smoothpebbles.org/do-it-again/
- Published: 2026-10-15T05:09:57.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-21T23:11:49.000Z
- Author: Richard Flanders

The following poem was inspired by G. K. Chesterton’s book *Orthodoxy*, where he talks about childlike wonder. Here is the quote from his book:

> A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.   
>  
> But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE.

As we prepare for heaven, shouldn't we become more like little children: more innocent, more filled with wonder, love, joy, peace? For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matt 19:14)

## Do It Again

A child is lifted, swung, set down,  
and before his feet have settled cries:  
Do it again!   
Again! Again!  
Not bored by repetition but hungrier still,  
as if the fun had only just begun.

Perhaps the sun is like that.  
Perhaps each morning a voice says Do it again!  
And it rises,  
not by grinding necessity,  
not by the dead turning of a wheel,  
but because Someone is not yet tired of it,  
because Someone is younger than the world.

Every daisy made alike,  
every snowflake made unlike,  
the Designer is delighted twice over.

Down on the shore  
a boy picks up a pebble smoother than the rest,  
then another and another,  
and pauses before the boundless depths.

An inquisitive man works the symbols through,  
and the symbols,  
obedient,  
open like a door.  
On the other side is light itself,  
a wave of field and field,  
unbroken,  
moving at the speed of light ... because it is light.

How could the earliest words,  
"Let there be light!"  
precede its discovery?  
How late we are to the game.

And how is it that the numbers come first?  
That on paper, for the pure pleasure of it,  
someone bends parallel lines,  
then imagines a root for minus one,  
and calls it imaginary,  
and a century later the universe is found already wearing that shape,  
as if the music were written before the orchestra was born,  
as if the score and the stars were waiting to be understood?

The works of the Lord are great,  
sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.  
Not of the clever.  
Not of the weary.  
Of those who take pleasure.

It is not that the world grew dull.  
The world is bright as ever.  
It is the eyes that learned to be sensible,  
that learned to call wonder a stage,  
a phase,  
a thing to be outgrown,  
that mistook weariness for wisdom  
and called it facing reality.

Yet reality is the very thing the child is facing,  
not escaping, but plunging in,  
headfirst, laughing,  
into the actual sea.

*Except ye become as little children.*  
Not childish. Childlike.  
Eyes washed clean, but wiser than before.

This life is the rehearsal.  
A lifetime of learning to look,  
to cry Do it again!

Because beyond the last horizon there is no last horizon,  
only the ocean of truth,   
unbounded,  
and the Maker of it,   
delighted,  
with the eternity of mornings ahead,  
when every child of His  
is finally young enough  
to never tire of it.