July 23, 2005, Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City, Utah, 2005)
My stepson and his wife recently had their first baby. Little Owen breathed his first greaths and, wht that, brought a breath of fresh air into the lives of all the rest of us.
Babies are bundles of optimism. As Carl Sandburg says, they are God’s opinion that the world should go on.
Being a man, I’m like Prissy in “Gone With the Wind”:
“I don’t know nothing’ about birthin’ babies.”
Being an observer of life, however, I know that babies — like bouquets of flowers — change the atmosphere wherever they are. They can enliven a whole house, a whole community. In ancient times, Welsh villages had bards who wrote grand, thundering rhymes about the birth of each new baby in town.
These days we just coo and giggle.
But we love them just as much.
The wisest souls have always known that children were miracles. If you harm one, Jesus said, you’d be better off getting dropped into the sea with a millstone around your neck. He said adults need to be like them if they expect to reach the kingdom of God.
I’ve always read that scripture as a lesson about dependence. We should be dependent on God our children are on us. I link it with the lines about not fretting what to eat or wear because the “good Father” will provide.
We read where the Bible says we must be as little children, and we try to turn it into a program — a plan to carry out. But I think all we really need is simple awareness. We are already completely dependent on the goodwill of our Heavenly Parent — we just don’t realize it. We swagger and bark, but it’s all bravado. We’re just kids dressed up as soldiers or superheroes, pretending to be powerful.
The truth is, we’re as helpless as babes in arms. A little water in our lungs, a little frost on our faces, and we’re gone. We’re as fragile as dragonflies, as delicate as dandelions.
Despite all of our crowing, we’re as vulnerable as little children. We don’t need to learn to be dependent. We just need to see how dependent we already are.
Years ago I read Stephen Robinson’s classic “Parable of the Bicycle.” For those who’ve been away for several years, it tells of his daughter saving up 61 cents toward a new $100 bike. At the store, the dad says if she’ll give him her 61 cents, he’ll pick up the rest of the tab. The story shows how much God contributes to our salvation. But I remember thinking, “Where did the daughter get her 61 cents?” She got it from somebody else — probably from her parents as an allowance, a gift or a reward. In other words, the whole bike was a gift. Even her own “worth” was a gift.
And so it is, in one form or another, with every bike and basset hound and good idea.
So it is with every baby.
Next week my wife flies off to Colorado to spend some face time with tiny Owen McCandless. It will be a grand exchange of gifts — my wife offering her love and affection, he offering his smiles. The humbling part — for me anyway — is realizing every gift we give, every gift we get, is a gift we received from somebody else.
We are totally dependent on the goodness of the ultimate giver.
Given that, only one attitude makes any sense to me: gratitude. Everything else is just spinning our wheels.