For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well. Psalm 139:13-14

The big reason for this Florida trip is family. You can tell from yesterday’s post (the kind of family dinner that this world needs) that Rebekah and I deeply appreciate the blessing of brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins and significant others.

So we arrived in Orlando in time for dinner at Joe and Cheryl’s home, where we enjoyed another table full of delightful young adults: Lindsay and Johnny, Jordan and Bobbie, our daughter Naomi and her boyfriend James.

But the star of the show was the latest family baby, Junia, born to Jordan and Bobby just a couple of weeks ago.

She is, of course, precious and beyond beautiful. And then Jordan was gracious enough to let all of us hold her.

There is something indescribably hopeful about holding a tiny baby. It’s like all the promise and the possibility that defines tomorrow is snuggled into my chest, compressed into this nascent being with a scrunched up face and a beating heart and the unlimited potential of God’s grace and purpose.

I will take this opportunity to remind those of every nation who trade in fear, and engineer conflict, and flippantly turn to war that this new baby (and every child like her) is the reason we will always protest your callous disregard for life and recoil from your lust for power.

Instead, and especially as people of faith, we must be in the business of life, and the encouragement of hope, and the promotion of peace. If this child does not convince you then let me offer this instead:

The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
    and a little child will lead them. – Isaiah 11:6

Grateful for this the latest startling evidence of God’s faithfulness and commitment both to today and to the future – DEREK