Why A Child?

Dear Boo and Bubble,

Today is Christmas Eve, the day before Christmas when those of us who adhere to the Christian faith celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.  I’ve been pondering a bit this afternoon about the choice by God to entrust the foundation of one of the world’s major religions to a child, one that we have called over the centuries as the Prince of Peace.  After all, in the common vernacular, isn’t it peace that usually follows war?  And…aren’t wars normally waged by men in armor who become heroes when they are victorious and forge the peace?  How could it make sense that child could proffer peace to a world in sore need of it?

Actually, if you think about it, God was pretty astute.  For what is a child if not the embodiment of total innocence and pure honesty — free of biases and judgments towards his fellow man? 

A human not yet jaded by the zigs and zags of life, who sees everything in wonderment and appreciation.  If the message you hope to distribute is based on love, what better vessel could you pick to carry it?

I have always contended that we are born the best we will ever be and we go downhill from there.  Apparently, your great, great, great, great grandfather Joseph Benson Cottrell was of a similar mind.  In an article entitled “Barnes at Bowling Green” published on March 4, 1882, he offers this opinion.

In one of his (Mr. Barnes’) sermons he declared we came into this world children of the devil, and have to be born again to become the children of God! My head shook in protest... Our children are of God and not of the devil.  The genius of our being is by conception and power and grace of God.  The devil and nature do not, ahead of God, originate something and constitute it, and then God came in afterwards with a kind of fourteenth and fifteenth amendment to the constitution, upon condition that rottenness elect to become soundness.  The reconditioning of the race, through the atonement of Jesus Christ, secures a genesis of individual, personal being, to each favorable to and not averse from God, truth, love, and salvation; and in recognition and realization of this the church will yet "march through the beautiful gates of childhood to the conquest of the world."

Whenever I am with you, my conclusion is always underscored.  You are two precious children carrying inside of you the open, honest and essential message of love.  I feel it in your wonderful hugs and shy kisses that are becoming harder and harder to pull from you with each passing year!  Please stay a child as long as you can.