Christianity is not a religion of miracles in which wow-actions occur. Reading about Jesus's life, we see how many miracles were performed by His hands, how actively all kinds of evil spirits manifested themselves in His presence and how His words convinced many of the truth. All this was a manifestation of the supernatural God's power of the Holy Spirit, and no one could prevent God from doing what He wanted. But there were people who were skeptically disposed toward the Savior and didn't attach significance to all His miracles. Even when Lazarus was raised, these people decided to kill him too, so that he wouldn't testify to God's power and glory by his personal example.
If the Lord raised the dead every day, this would become an ordinary matter and all wow-moments would soon bore the viewers. But when God's miracle touches my heart, my problems and changes my life, then I perceive it completely differently.
Today we are surrounded by so many miracles that we are accustomed to, that they don't surprise us at all, although we cannot understand and explain them. And those who try to study another miracle, we call scientists and relate to them with respect.
Our child is a miracle of miracles, a miracle of God's creativity. Although many children are born into the world, and all of them are unique and unrepeatable in their own way, but when our daughter was born, I understood how unusual this little person is, what a miracle with boundless potential this is. And this miracle is considered not only my child, but is also God's property, which He entrusted to our power, endowing us with parental rights.
Holding in my arms three and a half kilograms of born happiness, I peered into this miracle and couldn't understand how such a being from nothing became such a perfect person.
Little ears, eyes, nose, mouth, hands and feet — all this was skillfully created from us inside my spouse and given to us forever. By default the doctors declared us parents of this child and, giving him to us, went to work with other patients.
What responsibility it is to be father and mother of God's creation, which still knows nothing, can do nothing, understands little and is not capable of distinguishing good from evil.
I read that first one king, and then other researchers conducted an experiment on newborn orphaned children, in which babies were only fed and changed. They weren't taken in arms and weren't spoken to. As a result all these children in all cases died. I was surprised by such a reaction of the human organism to indifference toward the emotional needs of man.
Nurses from orphanages tell that children who were abandoned by parents don't cry and make almost no sounds. They somehow understand that nobody needs them, and it's very difficult for them to understand the meaning of their life. Into this little creation is already laid the need to be loved and needed. And when the child feels this, he begins to cry, be capricious and dictate his rights to his place under the sun. Even when this child comes into the world, doctors wait for his first cry, which tells them that everything is wonderful, that the child is alive and capable of much.
It's difficult to convey what happens in your heart when you take this dear little person in your arms, press him to yourself and carry him like this, trying not to cause him discomfort. Something awakens in you that from the first minutes of life emotionally connects you forever, and you no longer imagine life without this being. And how deliciously they smell! I think that if someone asked how God smells, the most suitable answer would be the smell of a baby.
Hug babies under any pretext, because little children smell deliciously of God.
The first days of his life the child sleeps very much, and waking up, desires to deliciously eat mom, receive from her another portion of warmth and tenderness and fall asleep further. There is nothing more useful and nutritious for a baby than his mommy's milk. Although breastfeeding can cause many inconveniences, and sometimes painful sensations, one shouldn't stop this action and replace it for comfort with artificial feeding. Together with mother's milk the child receives immune protection, necessary vitamins and minerals, emotional consolation, as well as much of what science hasn't yet discovered.
Understanding that our daughter can receive everything necessary only from mom, we paid special attention to the mother's nutrition, studying thoroughly what, when and how it's necessary to take. We carefully observed the reaction of the child's organism to those or other products that my wife ate, and then through her milk passed to our daughter. Sometimes the child couldn't suck out all the nourishment, and my spouse had to express milk into a jar so that burning of this product wouldn't occur in the breast. We decided to breastfeed our daughter as long as milk would be produced.
During breastfeeding a woman doesn't have usual feminine days, which can greatly gladden the husband and tempt him toward special attitude to his spouse. At this stage conception of the second child often occurs, which, although not bad in itself, may not please all women, since memories of pregnancy days and birth pains are still fresh in memory and can cause mental disorder.
Our daughter is still a very small and completely non-communicative little person. However, it's worth remembering that her brain records everything she sees, hears and feels. It analyzes the home atmosphere, remembers words and intonation, learns logic and absorbs everything it contacts. And I can perceive her as an unreasonable being who only eats and wets clothes. But this is the most powerful computer of human intellect, which, studying our world, logically composes all sounds and images, thoughts and feelings into a whole picture, in order to then give the person a whole worldview and personal perception of reality.
We heard from our mothers how many diapers and baby shirts they washed per day, but in our time this problem is solved very simply with the help of diapers, and your child is always dry and clean. True, with boys one needs to be very careful and not allow liquid to accumulate in the diaper, so that overheating of sexual organs doesn't occur, which can form future infertility.
Although we gradually enter into parental rights and learn much in forming the personality and character of our little princess, we don't forget that God is also the Heavenly Father of our daughter and desires to manifest His participation too in raising a worthy person. Therefore, as soon as we received this child in our hands and calmed down from all birth activities, we decided in personal prayer to dedicate our daughter to God and ask Him for special blessings for this child and for special participation in her life. With hope we brought our treasure in prayer of faith to our Lord and gave her destiny into the most reliable Hands of God, while leaving her to continue living in our family.
We believe that the Lord cooperates with parents at their request and faith in raising children and in forming their consciousness, so we always invoke God's name into our daughter's life too. We decided that it's better to pray more for our daughter than not to do this at all.
Questions for Reflection
Please read Ps.8:3; Luke.2:40; Is.7:14-15; 49:5; Gen.21:2-8; Ruth 4:13-16; Lev.12:2-6; 1Sam.1:9-11,20-23; Luke.1:80; 2:4-8,15-24 in light of this lesson. What other verses from the Bible came to your mind? What did you understand from this lesson? From what age should a child be perceived as a personality? How can one determine the awakening of intellect in a newborn child? When is it necessary to begin upbringing and education of one's child? How do you imagine this? Why is it necessary to dedicate children to God? Can a child be raised for God without God's help? In what way does the Lord help parents in their upbringing of children? At what age is God's help needed in raising a child? When does upbringing begin? What age should one wait for? Do relationships between husband and wife affect their children's characters? What will happen if one doesn't pray to God for blessing children? Do little family members surprise you? Where did they come from and become your relatives?