Photo by Jacob Amson on Unsplash

One of the first things we bought when we moved into our current house was a matching pair of padded chairs. We hadn’t been looking but stumbled upon them at Costco with the tell-tale “closeout” asterisks on the price tag and a price that was hard to beat. 

Erik called my brother-in-law, who had a truck, and later that afternoon, the chairs were dropped off at our new home. 

Without even unwrapping them I knew where they would go. We have a large bay window that desperately needed seats and this value-priced set was perfect. We threw away the boxes, screwed on the feet, and set them side by side in their new home with a small table settled in between. 

Very quickly, the chair on the left became my morning chair. Each morning, cup of jasmine tea in hand, I’d settle in with a blanket and stare out the window. More often than not, within ten minutes I’d be giggling. 

“You sitting in those chairs and giggling is one of my favorite things about this house,” Erik said.

What was I giggling at? 

Squirrels. 

The cluster of tall trees that the bay window looks out on is  home to at least one colony of squirrels. Most mornings, they scamper their way over the branches and down the trunks to our front yard patch of lawn. What they do then is rather extraordinary, and I can’t witness it without giggling. 

The squirrels play as if nothing else in the world matters. 

Sometimes in pairs, sometimes alone, their furry grey bodies tumble in summersaults as they zoom from one tree to the other, one stick to the next, pausing only long enough to juggle a pinecone with their feet before scurrying on with their joy-filled movement. 

They have no worries. 

They have no worries. 
They aren’t trying to collect food for the day. 
They are simply being. Playing. Delighting at being alive. 

As I watch them, I think of the birds and the flowers Jesus describes in Matthew 6:25-28. 

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? 

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.” 

In those morning moments, it’s as if Jesus is saying, “Be like the squirrels, Jess. Live. Delight. Play. I’m taking care of everything else. Trust me. Just enjoy.” 

While I’m thankful for those moments, and the lightness those long-tailed rodents bring to my heart, I must admit I don’t carry that feeling far past my morning chair. 

All it takes is two steps into the rest of the day and I’m back to worrying, striving, trying to earn my right to live, breathe, and take up space in this world. 

But most mornings, the squirrels are there, reminding me that I have another day to try again. 

In the TV series Ted Lasso, Jason Sudeikis’ character, becomes known for telling the players on his team to be like a goldfish. Why? Because according to him, goldish have the shortest memory of any animal. They can’t remember what happened five minutes ago, and therefore they can’t be mad about it. They can’t seek revenge. All they can do is be fully in the moment, giving that brief time in history their all. 

There’s some good truth to that idea, but I think I’d rather be like a squirrel. I don’t know how long their memory is, but after watching them every morning for the last several years, they always make time to play. 

I think we could all stand to do that a little more, and I’m not the only one. David Bently Hart, in a recent essay in Plough Quarterly, titled “Running in Circles,” wraps up a compelling argument about the value of baseball by saying, “Only in play… can we really understand the true nature, the original peacefulness, and the final purpose of creation.”

We were created only to play? I don’t think so. But I do believe that play can unlock the true purpose of life, which, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”