After Jesus healed the blind and the lame (!!!), (Mt 21:15ff) “when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He had done, and the children shouting in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ they became indignant saying to Him, “Do You hear what they are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, OUT OF THE MOUTH OF INFANTS AND NURSING BABIES YOU HAVE PREPARED PRAISE FOR YOURSELF’?”
Jesus alludes to David’s Psalm 8:2 – “By the mouth of babes and infants, you have founded a stronghold to silence the foe and the avenger.”
The Hebrew words behind “babes and infants” describe sucklings who can coo or caterwaul but not shout praise. Their sounds are incoherent. What foundation can God build from such frailty?
And more: “founded” = Hebrew: “yasad” – “establish, found, lay a foundation, build a fortress.” An expert builder told me that the essentials of a home were: first, the foundation, then the roof, the flow and light. How does God build a “strong” foundation with insubstantial utterances of babies?
Some baby blessings
Satisfied babies, the essence of cuteness, coo and charm. They open up new reservoirs of love. We nestle someone infinitely fascinating, imago Dei with 37.2 trillion cells – each cell stamped with its own inimitable DNA and intransigent gender. Imagine!
Our daughter, Rachel, has three children, including baby Charlotte. I asked Rachel: “What does being a mother mean to you?” Rachel thought for a while, then replied: “Being a mother has enriched me more than I could have known.” What a foundation!
And more: November 9, 2019, Thaddeus Busbice, age 87, died. When I pastored in NC, I knew Thad and family. Born during the arduous Great Depression years, he was raised on a Louisiana family farm with seven brothers and sisters.
Seven! Friend, this was the Depression! How was their zest for life greater than ours?
Receiving his Ph.D. in Crop Science in 1965, Thad’s dissertation was a seminal work in the field of plant breeding: “Inbreeding depression and heterosis in autotetraploids with application to Medicago sativa L.” Thad’s ongoing research revolutionized alfalfa genetic research. What God and Thad accomplished!
Children can bring blessings! What a foundation!
But, cynical cultural eugenics have led to new austere birth rates. “One of the main reasons young respondents give for wanting fewer children (or none at all) was a desire for more leisure time. Increasingly in a culture habituated toward self-interest and sexual freedom, children are viewed as curses rather than blessings” (Breakpoint 11/14/19).
Counterintuitive baby Powers – especially The Baby
Let’s be honest. What about dissatisfied babies: cranky – overtired – mixing up night and day – producing stress hormones in themselves and us? Babies – especially sick or wounded babies – exhaust us.
Even so, God can lay a foundation of humility, faith, compassion and kinship. For example, from my column “Family Size:” “Our children, better than anyone else, teach us what sinners we are. Apparently, God knew I needed a lot of instruction.” If you have not learned about sin, you cannot understand yourself, or your neighbors, or the world you live in, or the Christian faith” (JI Packer, “God’s Words,” 71).
Friend, God and “infants” accomplish this range of life instruction “without a word” – “wow!”
“In” = “not capable of” + “fant” = “speech.” We marvel; the Word made Flesh became an “infant.” How far will God go to demonstrate his love for us?
In 1661, an anonymous American author considering Jesus’ birth wrote: “To teach us humility all this was done/We learn haughty pride and resentment to shun/A manger His cradle who came from above/The great God of mercy, of peace, and of love. Chorus: Now let us be merry, put sorrow away: Our Savior, Christ Jesus, was born on this day.” What a FOUNDATION!
God’s stronghold and singing
“Stronghold” is “oz” – “strength, might.” Over forty times the Psalmists SING of such ‘strength.’ In our culture, few sing for joy. Below are JOYFUL songs with “oz.” Let’s connect these songs with babies.
After the pursuing Egyptian army had been swallowed whole into the Red Sea, Moses SANG: “The LORD is my ‘strength’ and my song” (Ex 15:2). Somehow, babies lay this foundation – inarticulately admonishing us to sing along heartily.
Before the 40-year journey across the wilderness, Moses sang: LORD, “in your ‘strength’ you will guide them” (Ex 15:13). Like Moses, little ones prompt us during mid-night lullabies to believe: “God’s strength will guide us too.”
Deborah’s battle song recounts unexpected victory against the mighty kings of Canaan. She urges herself on: “March on, my soul; be ‘strong’” (Jud. 5:21). Babes can rally us against mighty obstacles.
Hannah sang: “The LORD will judge the ends of the earth, giving ‘strength’ to his king” (1 Sam 2:10). Babies motivate us cry out to God for justice.
David sang: “Look to the LORD and his ‘strength’… ‘strength’ and joy are in his dwelling place, ascribe to the LORD glory and ‘strength’” (1 Chron. 16:11, 27, 28). Likewise, children help us repeatedly deeply scrutinize God’s strength.
More to life than we know
Tie together David’s Psalm 8 with his Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky proclaims his handiwork.” One translation continues: “They have no speech, there are no words.” Still, night-sky photographer Lane glows with awe about our universe. “Drive away from town light. Look up. You may see something that will forever change your life.” Or hold a baby. Like stars, the mouths of babes chant God’s glory. He’s orchestrating stars and babes in his purposes.
Mystery! “In our children, we venture something beyond our control” (“The Gift of Children,” First Things, 11/19). Does God have such a gift in your future? Can we hear God calling: “Adopt;” “Foster;” “Be fruitful and multiply?”
Mystery of mysteries! God sent his Son as an inarticulate baby – our FOUNDATION – the STRONGHOLD of our children and our children’s children – against the foe and avenger.
This is the first of six columns based on Scriptures where astonished Jesus asked elite leaders the same question” “Did you never read?” Despite their high level of education, they remained in their own shallow comfort zones. He expected them to connect what they had read in Scripture with life.
Added: ELIZABETH BRUENIG, I Became a Mother at 25, and I’m Not Sorry I Didn’t Wait
May 7, 2021, NY Times – Elizabeth Bruenig (@ebruenig) is an Opinion writer. Excerpts:
One of the things they don’t tell you about having babies is that you don’t ever have a baby; you have your baby, which is, to you, the ur-baby, the sum of all babies. The moment they laid her damp rosy body on my chest, I knew she would envelop my world.
What I didn’t understand — couldn’t have, at the time — was that deserting yourself for another person really is a relief. My days began to unfold according to her schedule, that weird rhythm of newborns, and the worries I entertained were better than the ones that came before: more concrete, more vital, less tethered to the claustrophobic confines of my own skull. For this member of a generation famously beset by anxiety, it was a welcome liberation.
Being young, or young enough still not to know yourself entirely, and then feeling the foundation of your nascent selfhood shift beneath you — perhaps that’s exactly the sort of momentous change that makes the whole enterprise so daunting. Yet there I’ve given up the game: With the exception of — perhaps — a few immutable characteristics, you are not something you discover one day through trial and error and interior spelunking; you are something that is constantly in the process of becoming, the invention of endless revolutions.
You catch glimpses of yourself in time, when life shines through your inner world like a prism, illuminating all the sundry colors you contain. It isn’t possible to disentangle the light from the color, the discovery of change from the change itself. And I think that’s all right. At 25, I nursed my newborn daughter at sunrise in a fifth-story apartment in Washington, dreamily wondering what had become of me, an erstwhile child myself. I searched her beautiful face. It’s hard to discern much in their features at that age, young and unformed as they are. But she peered up at me from the shadow of my shoulder, and I could see the umber of my own eyes taking shape in hers, “There I am, I thought, there I am.”
Courage
Steve Bostrom 1 4 22In a 5/10/20 article (edited): “Mother’s Day Genetics: How long does a mother “carry” a child?” Katya Orlova writes:
“The genetic bond between Mother and child does not end at conception. Mom and baby share each other’s cells during pregnancy. Some of the baby’s cells become embedded in various organs, and become a part of the parent. The fetus typically transfers more of their cells to the Mother than the other way around, and in some cases, for as long as decades after the birth of the baby.
What happens to these fetal cells once they reach Mom’s body? Some studies show that fetal cells are beneficial to Moms, and help in healing maternal wounds. The fetal cells in the Mother can also transform into cells needed by the Mother, including brain cells, heart cells…”
When I read “heart cells,” my brain screeched to a halt. Bear with me in this connection.
Our word, “courage,” comes from the word “heart” (“cour”). Can a baby give her/his Mom “courage?” Perhaps!
Let me remind you of those who show real courage – real heart – by giving birth. When some who see the only way “out” for them is abortion, when these Moms hear their baby’s heartbeat, some reconsider and chose to give birth. Why the change of mind/heart? Some Moms say: “Hearing the heartbeat really influenced me.”
So, we wonder: “Does God do heart-work in the Mother through the cells of her baby embedding in her heart/mind and healing scars – even fears?” In Psalm 103:13, David informs us even Dads can have this “womblike” connection/compassion.
Friends, when we pray for courage, how will God give us the courage we need? Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, it may be through a child – even a child in the womb.
