That's the conclusion to which I came recently when I realized there are women - generally of the grandmotherly age - who just might be willing to come to blows for an opportunity to hold my baby. It's sad, really. Where are all the babies? They should be everywhere - in grocery stores, dangling their little legs from front-riding Snuglis, in church, at the movie theaters hiding under blankets nursing while their moms enjoy a night out.... But they just aren't there and so our babies get a lot more attention than is probably their due. While on vacation, Fr Joel and I had the opportunity to go out together with Nathan to one of our favorite restaurants. The couple at the next table shared proudly that they had parented six children and before long the baby was in the arms of a new surrogate grandma and being cuddled through the restaurant and shown off to fellow diners.
A baby is truly a wondrous creature. What better way to attest to God's amazing creation than to reflect upon the form and functions of a newborn. It's truly difficult to look at a critter so small and helpless, straight out of the womb and not recognize our own helplessness in God's sight. Who else can knit together a whole, perfectly formed human being out of an egg and a little wiggly torpedo? Out of THIS comes a PERSON?! Amazing! And then to consider the whole symbiosis of baby and mother while the child is in utero. The mother eats, the baby grows - first a head, then a body, hands, feet, skeleton, brain...slowly a person emerges with a heartbeat, soul, dreams, the ability to feel pain and move toward light, respond to a mother's voice. And this is all within the first 14 weeks of gestation - incredible!
Unfortunately, many do not see the connection between bearing and birthing babies and the hole in the soul of our culture. Even those who are pro-life (anti-abortion) still feel the need to get things "fixed", to teach us large familied parents how "it's" done, to control God's ways and means of expressing His love - CREATION. God lives to Love and He expresses that love by creating us and by continuing to create. I am so blessed to be a woman and be able to cooperate in this creation process with my Lord and Lover of my soul. My womb magnifies the miraculous womb that bore our Savior within it. When my womb is occupied by a little developing life it becomes a prophetic picture of the tabernacle, God's grace poured out within the depths of my being.
Sadly, though, even those who love these lives when they arrive are willing to cut themselves off from the grace that flows from them. How many babies are aborted in this country and never see the light of day, never live to have a hundred surrogate grandmas doting on them? And how much life has been cut off in the midst of the marital embrace by abortifacient birth control, or the manipulation of our bodies to cease to function the way God created them to function? We are more willing as a culture to see our men made sterile and our women's wombs stripped from their bodies then to open our eyes wider to God's greater plan. He put those parts there, it's tough to justify taking them out of the picture for our own comfort.
Yep, there's a shortage of babies around here and it makes me sad. Babies have the ability to minister to the souls of others at levels no adult could ever hope to match. Fresh from the plans of the Maker, they exude innocence, unconditional love, hope and joy. They are God's greatest ambassadors to a hurting world. Don't you think it's time we go back to co-operating with grace and allowing them to enter the world? Then maybe those granny wanna-bes wouldn't have to come to blows over mine.
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