In his simple, delightful little poem, William Blake captures some of the deepest truths about God’s relationship with his Creation. Echoing the Scripture, Blake helps little children grasp significant doctrines of Christian faith. God as tender and loving Maker and Sustainer of little lambs and little babies. Each of us with a calling and purpose. Jesus as one of us and like us. We so dear to the heart of God that we are called by his name.

He became like us
As we anticipate the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that made abortions not only legal but also plentiful in our country—nearly 4,000 every day—we Christians ought to think seriously about the meaning of Jesus’s identification with us as human beings: "He became a little child." As theologian Thomas Torrance reminds us, Jesus became human, not as an adult, not even as a newborn, but as an embryo. One of the ways that Jesus became like us humans was that he developed in the womb of his mother exactly as we develop in the wombs of our mothers.

He, too, was "unwanted"
Almost as if to anticipate the argument that every child should be "wanted," Isaiah wrote that our Savior would "have no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him." In fact, he would be "despised and rejected" by us. Today, even in Presbyterian church policy, viable babies may be rejected because of a diagnosis of imperfection or because they were conceived in rape or incest (see the personal account of a child of rape on page 1 of this newsletter). But nothing in Scripture sanctions such an attitude toward our unborn brothers and sisters. Quite the opposite.

In baptism the Church welcomes little children into the covenant community with promises to nurture and care for each child. The Sacrament of Baptism recognizes each little child as a gift and says with its sacrament, "Little child, God bless thee! Little child, God bless thee!"

• From Isaiah 53: 2,3,7