“A baby is God’s way of saying the world should go on.” Who doesn’t smile (at least on the inside) at those words? The birth of a child carries its own inherent joy and celebration. It doesn’t need to be linked to anything else. So when with these words you connect it to God and hope for the world, well, you’ve said a mouthful.
The man who said these words was the poet Carl Sandburg. He was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry and another for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. For several years his three adult daughters and his two grandchildren lived with him and his wife on their farm on Connemara. And as long as we’re on the subject, he didn’t quite say the words as they’ve been passed down to us today. Sandburg’s word were, “A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on.” He went on to say:
A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had the choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time when the most marvelous invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don’t compare with a newborn baby in the number of and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow of chemical solutions, in timing devices and inter-related parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn’t know he is a hoary and venerable antique—but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby—with the great help of woman and His God and maker.
But you don’t have to be a Pulitzer Prize winner to know that having a baby brings change. That’s true with any child but it’s especially true with the a first child, It’s no longer just two adults hanging out together doing what they want when they want. Now there is a third person—and he or she is totally dependent upon you for everything. There are some things you know will change, others you can reasonably anticipate, and then those that you never saw coming. Yes, the birth of a child changes things.
Matthew would have us to see that the birth of Jesus changed the world. A long line of genealogy spanning almost two thousand years and all manner of things spoken by the prophets are fulfilled in Him. Wise men seek Him. A disturbed king threatened by His birth responds violently. His mother and earthly father live humbly and in many ways, heroically. God used Moses to save Israel from the oppression of Egypt but Matthew wants us to know that God used Jesus to save them from sin.
The birth of Jesus was God’s way of saying He wanted the world to have life!
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 