A few weeks ago I celebrated the birth of six cygnets in the pond outside our home in a post called New Creation. The cygnets are doing well; we thought we had lost one in the first couple of days, but discovered it was simply hiding out on mother’s back. Now they are growing quickly, people stop to ooh-and-ahh, and their little necks are beginning to lengthen.

Two weeks ago an even more wondrous birth occurred: that of Judah Alexander, our new – and first – grandson.

In that earlier post I cited from Eugene Peterson’s Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places; let me do so again (pp. 58-59):

God is the Creator and his most encompassing creation is human life, a baby. We, as participants in creation, do it too. When we beget and conceive, give birth to and raise babies, we are in on the heart of creation. Every birth is kerygmatic. There is more gospel in all those “begats” in the genealogical lists of our Scriptures … than we ever dreamed. … Birth, any birth, is our primary access to the creation work of God.

I was a latecomer to this firsthand experience common to most fathers today and common to the human race as a whole. Does anyone ever get used to this? I was captured by the wonder of life, the miracle of life, the mystery of life, the glory of life. … Nowhere I have ever been and nothing I have ever done in God’s creation rivals what I experienced in that birthing room. The setting was austere – antiseptic and functional – but the life, the sheer life, exploding out of the womb that night, transformed it into a place of revelation.

Welcome, Judah Alexander; you are very welcome indeed. May you be blessed of God all your days, and your parents with you.