This baby's voice
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger. Psalm 8:1-2
…and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,“‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” Matt 21:16
This baby’s voice
Soft and sweet,
Velvet for the eyes,
She — how can this be a she? —
opens her own.
Her tiny vocal chords coo
a shivery and wonderful sound,
ordained as praise before this world was,
Eternity brushes our now.
The wonder of thunder,
the terrible rattle of a lion’s rawr,
the ache of the innocent,
they all seem to tremble out of these tiny perfect lips.
The sound you can hear,
if you are still and quiet and listening,
is actually God-breathed.
A quivering, fleeting sample of heaven’s praise.
The worship of a new life,
the question of new possibilities,
the teaching of love unknown.
The untouched beauty of the new.
And all for the audience of … me.
exquisitely prepared and formed,
quietly “woven in the depths of the earth”
Executed and performed and finished, the concert only heard by me.
I am her mother.
I nourish and care for her
and watch her learn to leave.
And hold these tiny moments close.
Like “Mary hid these things in her heart”
the thoughts and sights of these quiet days,
gems of understanding,
to be rejoiced in, and handed back to God.
He lets me hear a tiny piece of his heart,
the beauty and shivery newness,
the preciousness and subtly.
If I’m quiet enough to hear.
It’s the velvet of a tiny life,
the stroking of a new anthem,
the life of purpose yet unlived.
It is this baby’s strength I hear.