Praise & Somersaults

When you are the husband of a pregnant wife, much of the bonding time you experience with your future child comes in the form of feeling his movements inside mom's tummy.  For about a month now, feeling my son turn somersaults in the womb has been a fairly regular occurrance.  Two nights ago, as Anna and I were relaxing in bed and Elijah was performing for us, I thought of this particular passage in the book of Luke 1:

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."

I like to think that Elijah moves when he hears my voice, but the Bible tells us that the very presence of Christ inside Mary's womb caused John to give praise through turning somersaults!

My prayer for Elijah is that his joy for the Lord will be like John's.  John did not have the cognitive ability to reason through whose presence he was in, nor did he need it.  God's blessing was on John before he was old enough to verbally confess Jesus as Christ, and as a member of God's covenant with believers, Elijah has been blessed similarly.  I pray that he would begin to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever" long before he is able to profess that joy with his mouth.

Luke 18:15-17
 Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. 16But Jesus called them to him, saying, "Let the children come to me, and(AB) do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it."

Charles Spurgeon said of this passage:

Our Lord tells us that the way of entering the kingdom is by receiving. "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein." We do not enter into the kingdom of God by working out some deep problem and arriving at its solution; not by fetching something out of ourselves, but by receiving a secret something into us. We come into the kingdom by the kingdom's coming into us: it receives us by our receiving it. Now, if this entrance into the kingdom depended upon something to be fetched out of the human mind by study and deep thought, then very few children could ever enter it; but it depends upon something to be received, and therefore children may enter.