Angelbrat asks: Why is the birth of a baby considered as a miracle?
Hi Angelbrat –
That’s a lovely question. What I especially like about it is that it gets me a chance to expound on something I think is really important. Which is Miracles.
You see, when you really think about it, all a Miracle is just something that you didn’t really think was possible before. Miracles happen every day – but once they happen, they’re not seen as Miracles anymore.
Imagine if you could get in a time machine and go back 200 years. Imagine showing those people an automobile, a radio, an airplane, a telephone, a television, a computer, the Internet – they might try to kill you because they’d be sure it was witchcraft, but in the best light, they’d say all of them were Miracles. And of course, the invention of each of them was! Even think of the word “automobile.” When you break it down, it means “thing that moves by itself.” That was a Miracle back then. It wasn’t actually alive, and didn’t require wind or anyone pushing it? Astounding!
One of the problems with living in this extremely technological world is that we are so used to new machines showing up all the time. Think of what we gripe about most often: “there was such a traffic jam this morning; my cell phone keeps dropping calls; there’s nothing good on TV tonight!” If we actually sat back and thought about how amazing all these things are, we’d probably lose a lot of that frustration!
And this isn’t only a human quality. When Handsome first brought me back to his house, I saw this other puppy there, on the other side of a clear door, and was really excited. I walked around the door – but the puppy wasn’t there. I walked back, and there I saw the pup through the clear door again, I pawed at it and it pawed at me, and… have you figured it out yet? It was a full-length mirror; the other puppy was me! Now that day, it was a Miracle. But once I figured it out, it never ever was again.
But then… there’s Nature. As we get more cynical and spoiled by man-made technology, it doesn’t change the fact that a tiny seed growing into a huge tomato plant or rosebush is… Miraculous! The sun, which just sits there minding its own business but calmly granting life to everything on earth… is a Miracle. The ocean, full of uncountable species of inconceivable variety, and with power to join or destroy civilizations… is a Miracle.
But maybe the most incredible Miracle of all, when you really check it out, is a human baby. Of course I’m inclined to say that puppies are cuter (and we toilet-train so much more quickly!), but to a large degree, a puppy is just a prototype for the dog it will become. While a human baby is something far less and far more. This creature who’s just spent nine months in a vastly different universe is now here and checking us all out, like a shocked alien from outer space. That tiny head holds the greatest computer ever known on Earth, the human brain, which is forming as we watch. Those glazed over eyes and dinky ears are picking up signals we don’t even know about, from all they scan.
And the more we learn about early childhood development, the more profound babies are. Things that they perceive even from inside the womb are burned into their minds forever. The still-developing bones and heart and lungs, the puppy-like unconditional love and desire, that will eventually become the most profoundly complex being there is – a human adult…
Truly, Angelbrat, if anything is still a Miracle, it’s a human baby. In fact, your name really encompasses it all – a baby is the raw material of an Angel and a Brat! And of course, one baby was the raw material that became You. And that is a wonderful Miracle!
(But don’t let all my gushing about human babies dissuade you from checking out puppies too. They’re so much more fun!)
Thanks,
Shirelle
