via Baby
What an interesting word prompt from the Daily Post! A person with a certain bent could go so many different ways with this word. Mother’s could write about newborns, Pro-Life and Pro-choice people could write about viability, or when life begins. Anyone (like me) who is tired of the continual alt-left rhetoric about Trump not being their president, might write about how the democratic party is acting like big babies. People in love could write about “baby” as their favorite pet name for their lover. Or, someone like me who is the proud grandfather of an almost one-year-old grandson, might write about a grand-baby. Here’s an interesting fact about babies. Did you know that a baby’s eyeballs do not grow? The eyeballs are fully formed and the baby’s head grows to allow more of the whites than the irises to show over time.
Of course, I’m going off in another direction. My particular bent always seems to have a biblical point, and why should this one be different, right? When I saw this word today I almost immediately went to Bethlehem in my mind. We’re almost two full months past the Christmas season, and for most people, with Valentine’s Day behind us, all eyes are on Saint Patrick’s Day. Too many people spend a few weeks in December thinking about angels, shepherds, kings and Baby Jesus, then it’s football playoffs, new year’s celebrations, and super bowl parties. We like to celebrate, and often. And hey, birthdays are celebrated every day of the year by someone.
Babies are mysterious to me. I want to know what they are thinking when those huge eyes look me, full in the face, with curiosity. It’s hard for me to side with the pro-choice folks, and not just because of the highly charged political battles, and not just because of the spiritual issues, but because I’ve looked into the eyes of my own children at birth, and now my grandson’s eyes as he is still not yet a year old. In these moments, I have often thought about the mystery that is salvation, brought to us in a baby, born in Bethlehem.
This baby was destined to grow up, travel to Jerusalem around bar mitzvah time and confound the spiritual leaders of the nation of Israel, then become a carpenter like his earth-daddy. Not one peep was heard after this until Jesus shows up in Cana at a wedding, and began His earthly ministry. After three years of wondering around as an itinerant preacher/teacher, he is arrested for blasphemy, tortured then crucified by the Roman army, and put to rest in a borrowed tomb. That is quite a narrative. Many today still think it is a mythical story perpetrated on mankind by a bunch of loser disciples.
My question is, “How do you look into a baby’s eyes, and not believe in a Creator?” God’s infinite wisdom and mercy and grace allow us, if we will, to come to Him in faith, and declare that He is this very Creator. However, it’s important to understand, in our human minds we can never fathom how God the Creator, could give His only baby boy, to offer us this grace. I don’t understand it, I cannot comprehend it, the mystery is too great. Yet it’s true. It is only when I stepped over the line of faith in the FACT of it, that I too began to feel reborn, a new baby, in Christ Jesus.
As I was saying... 