Open doors

Last week, on Thursday, my day off, one of my sons visited me with a very special friend of his who just gave birth to a beautiful baby girl on January 30. It has been many years since I have had an infant in the house or even held one.

I placed the car seat with baby Daniella on the end of the dining room table, so I could get a good look at her, while Johnny and Kelley unpacked the lunch they had brought to share with me. I hadn’t seen Kelley in more than a year. She looked the same as always, calm and beautiful, even though she’s a mommy now. Daniella was awake and squirming a little in the car seat, still strapped in and looking like she’d rather be out of it. I marveled at what a beautiful baby girl she was, perfectly formed, though tiny, so tiny that her little wrists were only as thick as my thumb, reminding me of the fairy tale baby Thumbelina.

While Daniella lay there looking up at the Torah scroll that I have mounted on the wall above the table as a scriptural ikon, with its silver oil lamp glowing, the three of us grownups had our lunch—Vietnamese baguette sandwiches from a new sandwich shop nearby, a delicious departure from the usual. Now that we’re entering Lent, I’ll have to wait till the day of Resurrection to have another one, but no matter. Another good thing to look forward to, although “man does not live by bread alone” (Matthew 4:4).

After lunch, Johnny released Daniella from her captivity, picked her up and carried her for a few moments, and then asked me what I was hoping he would, “Would you like to hold her?” “Of course, that’s what I was waiting for!” I responded, and he transferred the precious burden into my arms. I walked with her around the living room and dining room, looking at her in the different light as I moved from the table to the wall of windows and then over to the inner wall where my prayer ‘corner’ is, with its ikons, oil lamp and censers.

I held the little girl up to the ikons.
“Look, Daniella! Here’s your name day saint, prophet Daniel!” I said, as I took the ikon off the nail and brought it up close to her so she could get a better look. She peered at the picture mounted to a wooden board, humoring me. I placed the ikon back on the wall it shares with an ikon of prophet Moses the Law-giver, and my favorite picture of Jesus in a little frame I carved myself years ago. At least I got to introduce her to my ikons. She’ll no doubt see more of them in the future.

The rest of the time I spent holding and gently rocking her, sitting on a chair next to Kelley as she finished her lunch, and we talked, and I continued admiring Daniella and thanking God for this little miracle. What changes this little ambassador of Christ will bring into her mother’s life! Ambassador of Christ? She’s just a baby! Well, that’s true, but if we believe the Savior’s words, “to such as these the Kingdom of Heaven belongs” and “in heaven their angels are always in the presence of my heavenly Father” (Luke 18:16, Matthew 18:10), babies are, like Jesus, an open door, for themselves and for us. Could that be why we have ikons of baby Jesus? I wonder.

On our side, the door to our lives is closed, often locked, so much so that the Lord says, “I stand at the door and knock” (Revelation 3:20). How strange this is, to turn the tables on Him thus. On His side, the doors are open, and they are many. Though He bids us “knock, and the door will be open to you” (Matthew 7:7), indicating that our action is required, the truth from experience is, that He is opening doors for us every day. That is His nature, His divine nature.

Therefore Jesus said again, “I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. … I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. … I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
John 10:7, 9, 10b NIV

Holding a baby like Daniella is like holding the Word of God in your hands. Just as the Word tells you about God and also about yourself, because it is Alive, so an infant, newly created by the Lord, and sent by the Lord, is alive with a Life newly lit from the flame of the Holy One of Israel, as scripture says “the Light of Israel will become a fire, their Holy One a flame” (Isaiah 10:17).

Holding a precious infant is standing in a door way that He has opened, a door way between this world and His, reminding us once again of where we came from, and where we are going, when we say ‘Yes’… into a land we have never seen, but because we know the Lord has gone there before us, it is home.

And as I held her for a few more moments, I asked inwardly, “Κυριε, να σας ζηση”… “Lord, give her life.”