The one for me.

A child sits on a swing and lunges his body forward rhythmically, exulting in repetitive jubilance. He rejoices in the same pendulous routine of ups and downs, not out of boredom but out of joy, in the excess of life, out of sheer giggle-filled, chuckle-bursting liberation and indulgence.

Children love repetition, but not us adults. Along this long journey we call life, too many of us grow old too fast and lose the steely stuff children are made of. We are drained by the humdrum of everyday life. It is as if we had chosen to get off a rusty swing, a swing in whose heady rush of wind and exhilarating heights we no longer took pleasure in. The irony is our inner child need to be preserved correctly and beautifully if we are to grow up well.

We lose our child-like strength to exult in and triumph over monotony. Every day becomes the same as the last, except perhaps being, only more dead. Our days are flogged to death with sameness and we grow old and cold in our jobs, jobs which were once our star-dusted childhood dreams. We are dead before we die, processing data, typing in numbers and flicking people off, for we wither in the sameness of everyday.

As a third-year medical student, I was in the hospital drawing blood for and taking the medical history of the umpteenth patient when I found myself slumped forward, finally tired from asking the same questions and going through the same motions again. Where is your pain? How is it like, when did it happen, what is its nature, do you have any drug allergies? There were hoards of patients waiting to be seen, so many with the similar complaint of pain, discomfort and agony. Tired and drained, the crowd bothered me. The moment was scary because I learnt that repetition, far from the childhood exultation, had turned into a devastating monotony.

But the impatient crowd soon reminded me of the large crowd which followed Jesus from the towns, even though He had intended to withdraw to a solitary place. "When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick." (Matthew 14:13-14)

All at once, I realized the extent of Jesus' love not merely for the collective human race, but for every hurting, needy individual. Jesus, too, was tired and weary, but when He saw each one's need, he saw us more than as individuals, but as his Father's children. He, like his loving father eager to serve his hurting child, found the strength of steel to minister and care for every one. For a loving father may have many children, but would surely love each one in his own unique way, and seek repeatedly, unfailingly, ungrudgingly to fulfill each oneâ€™s unique needs.

Does a parent love each child any less because he has more of them? The realisation that God's fatherly, protective and intimate love for each patient then hit me hot in the face. Upon opening my eyes, I found new strength again to listen to the same answers, to do the same things, to perform the same procedures, simply because this was a different, unique Person, a child He calls His own - special and precious in His sight.

With God's love, we are enabled to work and answer and love always, without growing old, without growing cold. We are enabled to grow up well, with our inner child still preserved to enjoy the simplicity of celebrating repetition. For all His ancience and age, God's love is strong enough, to inspire newness into old things, the way a parent is inspired to be childlike all over again when he sees his child.

Could it be then with God's strength in us, looking through His eyes, we can find freshness in routine? Is it then that we will see differently every person at the counter, by the corridor, at the office cubicle, not as a digit, a statistic, case or patient or bed number, but as a Person, a child whom God loves so much and who is known so intimately that He would give up the world for him to know so? Because he loves the stranger as much as He loves me.

God the Creator takes great pleasure and delight in his creations day in and out. He draws the silken skies of dawn and dusk like coloured curtains, fingers the lips of chaste lilies and browns them to their graves, brews clouds over our lives for seasons of sunshine, rain and frost, creating the same creations over and over...and then, again. How much more than, that we as the crown of creation, adopted as children, are the delight of God the Father!

Our loving father knows how to see the distinctive value in each of us, and we can as well, encountering each one distinctly because the process of meeting, of knowing every individual, is different. Might I be the kind of doctor who sees every patient with the eyes God sees them with? After weekly 36-hour shifts running around meeting demands, can I serve each patient faithfully as if he were my first, with dedicated humility and dignity?

It would require a new understanding of my identity as a child in Christ. God has the infinite capacity for childlikeness, because He is. Jesus' heart is pure like a child's. It is full of faith like a child's. And we, as His children can have the same heart of purity and faith because we are in Christ. We can have hope in knowing that Christ in us will preserve our zest and zeal, our eternal gratitude for every sunrise and dusk, every flower which blooms and dies, every human being which passes our way, as long as we make a daily choice to remember who we are. His beloved children. Children of God the Father.