Lesson from a Baby

This morning in Children's Ministry I held an oriental child in my lap for perhaps three-quarters of an hour. He is an orphan, adopted and brought to the US only two weeks ago. He is smaller by a third than the other children. His thumbs are misformed into tiny crooked claws, and his upper lip shows the scar of an operation. When I first saw him draw back in fear at the touch of another child, my heart lurched. He cannot stand or walk well. He is weak, tottering, and will hardly venture into the middle of the room, even for a favorite toy.

I held him; he held me. He held my hands tightly with his tiny misshapen thumbs and perfect fingers. He has the dark eyes of his people, the slanting eyes and long, straight, fine lashes. Small, frightened, he still displayed a sensitive intelligence. The best moment of my day was the moment when I made him smile, and smile again, and even laugh.

He didn't know how to eat a cracker. He made the most terrible faces at his first taste of one, but learned quickly to like it. I sat on the floor and stretched out my legs to make a low but protective barrier between him and the others. Sometimes they toddled over to stare. Often I had to keep one of them from taking his toy, or running into him by mistake.

He was so quiet, and held me so tight, but released my hands when I required it of him, with a sort of resignation (the resignation I have seen in other orphans, who know that they cannot have an adult's protection and touch all to themselves for more than a few minutes at a time). That resignation, more than anything else about him, made me want to cry.

I stroked his hands and head because it seemed natural to do so, with quiet to match his quietness, but also I sang to him softly. When I sang he looked at me with astonishment. I wondered if it was a tune he knew. We began to play with a toy, a blue cardboard block. I set it up on my knee, and he knocked it over. Again and again we repeated this simple game, because it made him smile ecstatically. Whenever the block fell outside the barrier of my legs, I gestured and encouraged him to get it himself, to venture beyond me. That is the only way to learn safety and security---by experience.

When I first saw the expression in his eyes, I loved him. It was that simple. When I saw his hands, I loved him more. When I saw his weakness, I wanted immediately to see him transcend it. When I understood his fear, I became devoted to his protection; but still more to his ultimate freedom from fear. I longed to serve him, body and heart. I wished for the power to communicate my value for him, and intense desire for his good. I wanted to wipe the resignation from his eyes.

All this required no effort, no thought on my part, no will of mine, no intellectual deduction. It was as simple as breathing. I sat in the church meeting and heard a feeling, powerful, Gospel-centered sermon later that day, but even that lesson paled in comparison to the one I contemplated while holding a foreign, frightened baby on my lap, whom I yearned over with all my heart.

The lesson was adoption, and the metaphor was myself and the child. For in the larger picture I am that weak, tottering, tiny, scarred baby. I have been praying to God that I might see my sin---and God showed me, not my sin precisely, but my whole state of need, which is invisible to me. I go about imagining myself healthy, whole, and sound, mature, educated, even reasonably prudent and self-controlled. I don't see my own desperation, soul-loneliness, fear, tottering weakness, and crook-thumbed grasp. I don't understand.

But now, tonight, I think I see a little better, or remember a little more of what I truly am. And just as I feel unspeakable tenderness towards that small Asian boy, so I know, much more, God is loving us both.

I am astonished in a way I have not been for a long time. I remember the first time I asked, in trembling wonder, "Why do you love me?"

How could I have forgotten? How like you it is, my God, to remind me in this simple way! As you opened my heart for a child, so I know your heart opens for me. I am coming... I am coming. Only give me your hands to hold with my misformed hands while I stumble forward. I'll hold them so tightly, and you won't ever make me let you go.