LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger (Psalm 8:1,2).For our family, the summer of 2018 will be remembered as a season of babies. Two little girls were born into our clan in recent weeks: Rose Evangeline and Inessa Carolina.
Consequently, when I hear the cries of these infants, I’m reminded of David’s declaration in Psalm 8.
David knew something of babies; the Scriptures name 10 sons fathered by the king.
David’s point in the early verses of this psalm: The Lord is so magnificent, His Name so regal in all the earth – and throughout the universe – that even the squawks and cries of newborn children represent evidence for the God of the Bible, and praise to His Almighty Name.
In that way, babies declare the Gospel.
That God exists and that He has spoken is evident even through the inarticulate moans, shrieks, and cooing of a baby. His omniscient strength – and only the Lord could achieve this – is established against those who are hostile toward Him, through noises emanating from the nursery! And He uses the sounds uttered by infant children to counteract and bring to silence, the clatter of His adversaries. Over 3 centuries ago, Puritan writer Stephen Charnock declared, " The Scripture makes the appetite of infants to their milk a foundation of the divine glory". We often affirm that the birth of every baby is a miracle. Of course this isn’t true technically; a miracle is something that by the power of God, thwarts the laws of nature. In His master design of our race, birth is a natural result of human love between a wife and her husband, making them mothers and fathers. The union of the two contributes physically – and ultimately emotionally and spiritually, for better or worse – to the child to whom they give life. Back in the 16th century, Martin Luther said of God, "He could give children without using men and women. But He does not want to do this. Instead, He joins man and woman so that it appears to be the work of man and woman but He does it under the cover of such masks." And this mysterious, enigmatic process, to which macro-evolutionary forces of natural selection and survival of the fittest offer paltry, inadequate explanation, bears from conception to birth the fingerprints of God.
Takeaway: Only the Lord could devise an ingenious plan wherein He responds to the hostility and vitriolic attacks of His enemies – both human and other – with the guileless cries of a baby.
So when I hear these tiny girls and the other infant children at Bethel, I remember in ways that the babies cannot yet understand – but, through the influence of their parents and family members, and exposure to God’s Word, I pray will one day embrace – that they are reflecting the glory of God in this dark and antagonistic world.
