January 18, 2023

I had the enormous privilege last Saturday to do a blessing for a 1 day old newborn in the hospital and then, later, baptize a toddler in our St. Anne’s Chapel. Both are achingly poignant moments, aren’t they? Babies’ lives are a tabula rasa. Yet we know that the world into which they have been born, though shot through with joy and beauty, is nonetheless replete with woe. And those babies are sure to encounter their fair share of that woe.

Frankly, I don’t understand how anybody could stand such a moment were it not for trust in God. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13) The God of love and grace is with us from beginning to end. And what does that God do? He turns all woe into everlasting wonder.

“Into your hands, O God, we place your children. Support them in their successes and in their failures, in their joys and in their sorrows. As they grow in age, may they grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.” (Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child – BCP)