Have Babies

"And to the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception."  (Genesis 3:16)

Small and fragile, a newborn always gets our undivided attention.  We watch the rise and fall of their chests. We breath deeply of their sweet must.  Their cries elicit our pity.  Their feet and fingers awe. Nothing can be as velvet as their skin.  What wondrous creatures they are.  The epitome of earthly goodness, truth and beauty.  Even as they grow they hold our attention.  But they all own a dark destiny.

Whether by choice or accident, each child is born to break our hearts.  Their illnesses, their trials,  their waywardness and repentance, all cut our souls like God's two edged sword.  Taken from our flesh or someone else's, there is no injury comparable to that dealt by a child born in our hearts.  So why have them?  Why accept the wounds they promise to give?  Because they offer the potential of unconditional love.  Not their love toward us, but the hope that we might learn to love them without qualifiers.  So go ahead have babies, because it is through the sting they inflict that we understand God.

These are my "babies".  Swords that have shaped and pruned me.

Desperate Mothers

Desperation is defined as: feeling, showing, or involving a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with.  I believe every mother has been desperate sometime.  I have been desperate for my child's healing.  I have been desperate at choices made.  I have been desperate for my child's salvation.  Desperation is a cruel master and leaves you weary and spent.  Desperation may feign love,  but unmasked desperation is faithlessness.

But...
With faith, we wait to see the flush of health on that little brow that burns with fever.
With faith, we believe our prodigal child will return humble and converted.
With faith, we anticipate choices made by principle not feeling.
With faith, we hope in the quickening of that quiet body.
With faith, we trust that this illness too, will pass.
With faith, we contemplate the grand reunion.
With faith, we implore for the Master's touch.
With faith, we hold onto the hope of peace.
With faith, we thrill in assurance.
With faith, we expect action.
With faith, we rejoice.
With faith, we rest...

After His Kind

Every living thing in creation reproduces “after his kind”.  God gives a list:

Genesis 1:

v 12  “And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yeilding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind...”

v 21 - “whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind...”

v 25 - And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind...”

But mankind does not reproduces after his kind. The record says that “God blessed them and God said unto them. Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth...” (Genesis 1:28)  Never does it mention that mankind would reproduce after his kind. And although my daughter looks like me, and I look like my mother and she like hers our goal is not to reproduce after our own kind.  Our purpose in child bearing is to reproduce in God’s image.  He is the Progenitor and our work is to replenish the earth with people that look like Him.

My Daughter, My Mother and Me