Excerpt from Matthew 3:1-17

"Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.  And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, 'This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.'"

Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell

For most of my life, I have not been a fan of babies.  I do not mean that I disliked them.  I mean that my appreciation for them was...academic.  If someone said, "Do you want to hold him?" I would say, "Yes!" because I'm not stupid.  But really, babies were like tigers or panoramic views: best appreciated from a distance.

Then we got a baby of our own, and now I'm crazy for them.  If I see one, I long to hold her and smell her head.  On the street, I make silly faces at them instead of wishing their parents would get the stroller out of my way.  I frequently have to remind myself that it's rude to nibble on strangers' wee toes.

It's like our kid is a little prism that refracts my love for him out to all babies everywhere; or maybe it's that he gathers in all the babyness in the world and focuses it on my hard heart to crack it open.  Babies in general couldn't do it; it took being responsible for one baby in particular to make me crazy for all of them.

Don't you think God's like that?  Don't you think God loved babies in a new way after that night in Bethlehem?  That when God bathed God's own son that day at the Jordan, God learned to bathe the rest of us, too?  And when Jesus died, don't you think God's heart broke, that God learned what every parent who's ever lost a child felt, and that's why God decided to defeat death forever?

Don't you think that sometimes it takes a baby to teach a father how to love?

Prayer

Thank you, God, for babies, for cracked-open hearts, and for all this love.  Amen.

About the Author Quinn G. Caldwell, a United Church of Christ minister, is the co-author, with Curtis J. Preston, of the Unofficial Handbook of the United Church of Christ, published by The Pilgrim Press.

If you liked this devotional, you might like "Bless," by Quinn Caldwell.