Wonder, dirty dishes, and the gift of personhood

It’s been one month since we met face to face, one month since you emerged from your wrappings into my embrace. 

As it stands today, the kitchen is a mess, but there is other work to be done - the work of wonder. 

You are still so very little, and yet you are already your own person, and in this thought I discover the gateway to many others.

Your personhood is a gift. Personhood is always relational. We exist in the image of God, Himself a Being who is eternally relational. In order to know what it means to be a person, we must consider ourselves in relationship to God. 

Your existence is a gift from God. We cannot escape the truth that we are not self-originating. There is no spontaneous generation. Only the generosity of a God who is love, out of whose overflow we come dancing out of the womb, still attached by a pulsing cord to the one who carried us into life. This cord may be cut, signifying fully our free-willed otherness, but the mark remains - the thumbprint of our Maker. 

As the poets have said, “In him we live and move and have our being.” Each breath, each flutter kick, every coo and cry - gifted being. And a glimpse into the Ground of Being. 

Your eyes are icons into eternity. They gleam with the mystery of divine life, at once concealing and revealing its presence. 

And how does one fitly respond to the light in your eye? Oh it comes so naturally when life is so new. (This is another layer of the gift, another analogy to explore.) With free-flowing joy, with a smile of recognition, with deep-welling gratitude, and the knowledge that great revelation is contained in your genesis. 

There will always be kitchens to clean, but I will never again have you so new. I will never hear God whisper the beautiful mysteries of newborn truth like in these swaddled moments. In these days, you are nearsighted, and that so you can focus on what is most important to your survival - the faces of those who love you. And perhaps I can learn from you, and let the stacks of dishes dim in the distance. So I draw near. Perhaps my survival depends on beholding your face. 


~lg