Your preliminary sense for truth is about about as describable and about as dependable as your sense of smell. It’s helpful to identify which “scents” we find the most convincing and which of them we waft away without a second thought.
The scene is a crying child, desperate for his parents’ attention, insisting that there’s a monster under the bed. Imagination has run amok and the blankets and teddy bears no longer seem an adequate defense for such an urgent threat. How do we respond?
How many colors are there? If you’re manufacturing crayons, this is an important question. A standard 8-pack of Crayola crayons, for example, comes with Red, Black, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple, and Brown. That’s probably about as many as you would have memorized as a toddler, minus gray and white. But Crayola also offers a pack of 120 crayons, and even they wouldn’t claim that it includes every color.
The ability to appreciate things and people we encounter really is an essential part of everything we think and do. It’s our tool for connecting with every person, place, thing, and idea. Appreciation is the mechanism by which we grant value to what is outside by giving it a place inside. And it’s not merely a God-given privilege for enjoying creation; appreciation is a responsibility—one we often deliberately avoid for its difficulty. . .