Dear Noah:
You are here.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you for leaving Heaven’s perfect embrace and the adoration of the angels. You could have chosen to stay with God. That you opted instead to join a rag-tag bunch of imperfect beings on earth is proof of your optimistic nature.
We anticipated your birth knowing full well that God would use your melting-pot ethnicity to create a beautiful baby. Even so, never in our wildest dreams could we have predicted your exquisite loveliness. Now, looking into the face of Diversity’s Child, we feel the gentle reprimand of a Father who wants us to love in the way that He loves His children no matter what their race or nationality.
Holding you in my arms, I tumbled into your fathomless eyes. You looked at me and moved your raspberry-colored lips as if you were trying to tell me something, and I realized that you were trying to articulate something of the Love from whence you just came. You were talking about God’s hopes for you…for us….for the future.
It occurred to me, little Noah, that you are carrying particles of your namesake’s supreme hopefulness in the very atoms of your little body. Perhaps your purpose in life is to reignite the flame of optimism in all of us. Sweet Noah, is it your purpose to re-teach us how to trust? Is it your mission to remind us of the mighty trust that led one obedient servant to do something nonsensical? Are you here to make us re-imagine how that ancient character gathered together God’s non-human creatures and then became the willing caretaker of that precious cargo until the day the dove delivered the branch of a new beginning?
Did you assume your earthly internship so that you could ring our memory bells? Remind us of God’s original intentions? Nudge our vague recollection that we are to co-exist in peace and love so that all creatures great and small might enjoy their time on earth? Are you trying to remind us that we all have an ark to build, and that one person can change the destiny of the world?
Darling godson, you already have.
