God Sends a Baby

My sister recently introduced me to this quote by F. M. Bareham that was cited by President Kimball: “A century ago [in 1809] men were following with bated breath the march of Napoleon and waiting with feverish impatience for news of the wars. And all the while in their 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: Gladstone was born in Liverpool; Tennyson at the Somersby Rectory, and Oliver Wendell Holmes in Massachusetts. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, and music was enriched by the advent of Felix Mendelssohn in Hamburg. 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 God can manage his world only with great battalions, when all the time he is doing it with beautiful babies. When a wrong wants righting, or a truth wants preaching, or a continent wants discovering, God sends a baby into the world to do it."  I don’t think much has changed since then—the world still does not focus on babies or value the children God sends into the world.  As the Lord said, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).  The focus of the world today is on stock prices and sports teams and Netflix shows and the latest new gadgets, not the precious children God is sending into the world to help prepare it for the Second Coming of the Savior. 

               Of course, it is easy to criticize the world at large for its values, but what is important is what we actually value in our own home.  I should be asking myself whether my children know the value that they have to me or whether I show more interest in those ephemeral things of the world.  Newel K. Whitney was chastened as he was told to be “more diligent and concerned at home”—I’m sure the Lord would give me the same correction today (Doctrine and Covenants 93:50)  I think I usually get it backwards, being very diligently concerned about work, even when I’m at home.  And yet, if I truly believe the quote about how God accomplishes something great, I will be much more worried with how I’m raising my children than how I’m raising our profits at work.  They are the future, and I can change the future by preparing them for it. 

This evening our family went over to the playground at the elementary school, and my three-year-old daughter was playing while my wife was walking the baby in a stroller around the perimeter.  As my wife passed by, my daughter asked, “Are you going for a walk?”  My wife responded that she was, to which my daughter replied, “Will you miss me?”  This was the pure, simple love and devotion from a little child seeking to be reassured of her place in the world, hoping to know that she would be missed even for the five minutes my wife would be away from her.  I hope I can show to her and all her siblings that yes, I miss them deeply when I’m away, that I value them more than I do my phone or my computer or anything else that pulls my attention from them.  The Lord told Jeremiah that He knew him from the beginning: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5).  God had a great work for Jeremiah to do and was preparing him from the womb to perform it.  Surely He likewise has a great work for my children to perform in this life, and my great mission is be diligently concerned in helping them accomplish it.