A few weeks ago, I crossed paths with the husband of family friends while at church. My husband and I no longer reside in the same ward and so it was good to see him. Better yet was the fact that he was holding his new baby. We stood for a few minutes chatting in the foyer, and then following a sweet prompting the Spirit sent to him, he asked me, “Would you like to hold her?” This good man gently laid his prized daughter in my arms. In humble awe, I backed towards the couch and softly sat down. Then I gazed into the lovely that was her perfect little face. It was a sacred experience to wrap my arms around their little bundle of divinity, this sweet, pure one so recently come from heavenly realms.
Yesterday another friend sent me several pictures of her little boy on his blessing day last Sunday. This dear one has an adorable little face, with perfectly set eyes, the cutest of noses, and he was wearing the most darling, white crocheted blessing outfit with matching white feet coverings. As I scrolled through the pictures more than once, a smile formed on my lips.
I am so happy for my friends and the sweet blessing of their beautiful babies.
The beauty of a newly bestowed baby is wordless, but I want to share a few thoughts on the subject if I may find the words.
First, the world is not alright. We have serious and troubling problems. But the order of the family as designed and declared by God is right. That order includes principles as taught in The Family: A Proclamation to the World: there is an inviolability to mortal life, children are trusted and treasured gifts from God, the family is of God, parents have a sacred obligation to love each other and their children, and finally that children come to us with a Godly entitlement at birth to the blessing of a father as well as a mother. (The Family: A Proclamation to the World).
Those in and of the world do not like this order of things and many are running berserk and amuck with deviations to the Designer’s design. But no matter. All the distorted fuss does not change the truth, and the truth is that there is an order to the human family. Those coming into this world from the former one are beautiful little babies who have a divine right to receive the properness of God’s order.
Of greatest import in the very beginning, God “blessed [Adam and Eve], and said unto them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth…” (Moses 2:28) This commandment has never been rescinded. For all who are able and when the order is right, it is a hallowed duty, a sublime privilege to partner with spouse and God and bring beautiful babies into this fallen world.
Finally, I invite you to consider these words by Frank Boreham, a preacher, who wrote about the Napoleonic Wars of the 1800’s.
“Men were following, with bated breath, the march of Napoleon, and waiting with feverish impatience for the latest news of the wars. And all the while, in their own homes, babies were being born. But who could think about babies? Everybody was thinking about battles…In one year,…between Trafalgar and Waterloo, there stole into the world a host of heroes!…[In] 1809,…Gladstone was born at Liverpool; Alfred Tennyson was born at the Somersby rectory; and Oliver Wendell Holmes made his first appearance at Massachusetts…Abraham Lincoln drew his first breath at Old Kentucky. Music was enriched by the advent of Frederic Chopin at Warsaw, and of Felix Mendelssohn at Hamburg…Elizabeth Barrett Browning [from] Durham…But nobody thought of babies. Everybody was thinking of battles. Yet…which of the battles of 1809 mattered more than the babies of 1809?…We fancy that God can only manage His world by big battalions…when all the while He is doing it by beautiful babies…When a wrong wants righting, or a work wants doing, or a truth wants preaching, or a continent wants opening, God sends a baby into the world to do it.” (Quoted, Johnson, P. “Beautiful Babies Blessing the World,” 14 March, 2023)
So as you hold your beautiful babies or those beautiful babies of others, please will you remember that the order of the family as intended and planned by God is right, that the holy call to bear beautiful babies still echoes through the chambers of time, and that perhaps the beautiful baby you cradle today is being born to right a wrong, perform an incredibly needful work, has powerful words to preach, or will reshape lands and borders?
Elder Maxwell was so right.
“When the real history of mankind if fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in home and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time.” (Maxwell, N. “The Women of God,” April 1978)
Our beautiful babies…yes, our beautiful babies – so indispensable to “the everlasting family.”
Unto all the world: May you have the single honor and privilege of holding a beautiful baby soon.
2 responses to “Beautiful Babies”
I tell my stressed-out daughters-in-law, who are right in the midst of raising big, busy families, to be patient and hang in there, for these years REALLY DO PASS QUICKLY! Then all they will have are memories of when their children were little. For the rest of eternity they will know their children as adults, but they are the ones privileged and blessed to experience their children as babies, and as toddlers, as little human beings dependent upon others for their existence.
I love this perspective, LaDawn. Thank you for sharing. Katrina