Then he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven.”—Matthew 18:3 (NLT)

This morning, I jumped on my bike and peddled down the road. It’s a route I’ve traveled hundreds of times since I was young. As I coasted down Jenny’s Hill, named after the woman who lived there forty-some years ago, I took my feet off the pedals and straightened my legs, balancing and swerving, whooshing down the bumpy hill as I’d done as a child. 

I felt ineffable joy. 

Perhaps it was being on the same road that I grew up on and coasting down the same hill that gave me that feeling of being a kid again, that wonderful, wordless excitement of being both connected and carefree, young and old, all at the same time. 

I pondered the word ineffable: unable to describe, beyond expression. Growing up, that vocabulary word challenged me. I was convinced everything could be described. There was nothing that couldn’t be unraveled and harnessed with words. Every experience could be expressed through language, and saying you couldn’t find the right words was just plain lazy. 

I pedaled up the next hill faster and faster and tried to put the ineffable feeling of coasting down the hill and reexperiencing my childhood joy into words. Like God Himself, like faith, there are some things I still can’t find the words for. I laughed at myself for being decades older and still trying to attempt the impossible. 

I let go of trying to capture the magic and let joy flow through me, coasting in the breeze. 

God of Wonder, maker of the ineffable, thank You for innocent childlike joy and a million other experiences that are too beautiful, too wonderful, too amazing to put into words.