Dear friends,

Good comedians highlight the obvious, the things we miss right under our noses.

Perhaps that’s why I laughed out loud today when re-reading chapter one of G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy.

Chesterton isn’t trying to be humorous: ​“I never in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny.” He simply tells the truth with such clarity, humility, and wit that the reader can’t help but smile. And unlike dark humor at someone’s expense, Chesterton’s observations evoke a rare and pure joy. Like witnessing some surprising act of nature — perhaps a diving bird snatching a fish midair — reading Orthodoxy makes me laugh with wonder and delight.

I’m not alone. ​“As I look back now,” writes Philip Yancey, ​“and ask in what way Chesterton affected me, I see that he helped awaken in me a sense of long-suppressed joy.”

Part of what makes Chesterton’s writing crackle with vitality and joy is his journey. He came into truth not by inheritance but through adventure: ​“I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before,” he quips. ​“I did try to found a heresy of my own, and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.” Yancey notes he, too, ​“landed in a similar place after a circuitous journey.”

Making room for spiritual wandering is what makes room for someone to come home. Trying to make a person — or a society, for that matter — hold on to a Christian way of thought and life through abrasive tactics and rhetorical violence is bound to backfire.

Imagine if the prodigal son’s father had attempted to hold him captive at home or withheld his inheritance in order to ​“teach him a lesson.” The lesson the son needed would have never been learned. It was the father’s generosity and goodness and gentleness that afforded the wayward son the opportunity to come home via a ​“circuitous journey.” The older son, on the other hand, never left and thus never came home.

Humans like to explore. Even if one generation has a way of life that seems to be working fine, the next generation will try something new. What Chesterton does, and what I hope more Christians will do, is make the ancient path feel fresh — laugh-out-loud-wonder-full — by illuminating with winsome wisdom what has been under our noses all along.