Childhood Curiosity

Today I’m sharing a reflection from my husband, G. Wray, on children, questions, and the kind of trust that still knows how to wonder.

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“Why is the sky blue?” my granddaughter asked.

“Because that’s how God decided to paint it,” I told her.

She accepted this with the seriousness such an answer deserved—at least for half a second.

Then came the next question.

“Why do birds fly?”

I had not even finished smiling from the first one.

I knew what was coming from this curious little girl, and I wanted to stay in the moment as long as I could. So I turned the tables and began asking questions of my own, partly to teach her, but mostly just to hear what she would say.

“How do fish breathe?” I asked.

She thought for a moment.

“I think maybe from the grass they eat,” she said with great confidence.

Then her eyes brightened.

“Oh,” she added, “and because their moms tell them to.”

Of course.

I should have known.

A fish breathes because her mother told her to.

Children have a way of making the world feel young again. Their questions come without apology. Why is the sky blue? Why do birds fly? How do fish breathe? To them, the world is still full of mystery. Everything is worth wondering about. Everything might be hiding a doorway.

Life has a way of narrowing us, though. Somewhere along the way, many of us lose the wonder we once carried so easily. The world becomes more solid. More manageable. Less mysterious.

I think about that sometimes when the questions get bigger.

Not the “why is the sky blue?” kind, but the questions that come after loss, disappointment, confusion, or change. The ones we carry quietly because we are not sure what they will cost us if we ask them out loud.

Maybe that is why Jesus’ words about children have stayed with me.

He did not seem bothered by their smallness, their need, their wonder, or their questions. He welcomed them.

Children ask questions because they trust you know the answer. Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to ask questions differently—to test, to challenge, to prove the answer is not there.

Perhaps what Jesus invites us back to is not innocence exactly, but posture.

The posture of a child who asks because they believe someone good is listening.

And maybe somewhere along the way, we begin to lose what children still know:

Asking is not the opposite of trust.

Sometimes asking is what trust sounds like.

Here is something I have found: once we remember how to be curious again, questions begin opening windows into worlds we had forgotten were there. One question becomes another, and before long we are on a journey of discovery—not away from God, but toward the One who has been near all along.

Perhaps curiosity changes our posture.

Instead of only asking, “Why is this happening?” we might begin to ask, “What is this trying to show me? What might God be revealing of His goodness, even here?”

Not every question gets answered quickly. Some do not get answered the way we hoped.

But curiosity keeps the soul open.

And maybe that is no small thing.

The invitation may be simpler than we think:

To look again.

To ask again.

To let the world become a little less ordinary and a little more alive with the presence of God.

To believe there may still be treasure hidden in the field, waiting not for the hurried heart, but for the curious one.

And perhaps, like a child, we begin there.

With a question.

What question have you been afraid to ask?

And deeper still—what if the question we are most afraid to ask is the one that most needs to be brought into the light?

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Thank you for reading.

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© G. Wray. All rights reserved.