Observations on a new life

Our daughter, Maria Ellen, will turn one week old in a little more than 12 hours, and for the last seven days my wife Jessica and I have been carefully observing her - we admit it, we have a hard time not watching her every second! Here are some of the little things I love about her already: I love how her whole body starts shaking before she sneezes. I love the blue-gray color of her eyes and how they dart around. I love how she cries only when she really needs something - food, comfort, to be cleaned. I love the small hands and feet with the long fingers and toes. I love her soft brown hair. I love hew her bottom lip kind of quivers and I think she about to cry, and then she doesn't.

Most of all I love how she gives me a better idea of unconditional love and grace. She is incapable of doing anything to earn my love; it is as natural as breathing for me to love her. Does God really just delight in me the same way? Somehow it is truth that I cannot imagine to be true, because of how deeply-rooted my own struggle with the absolute grace of God is. Something within me wants desperately to establish my own worth, on my own terms and in my own way. Yet before God, I can do none of that. I am simply worthy because He has formed me (and my daughter) in His image. I think now I understand that a little better.

John, thank-you for posting the announcement for me last week.