There’s something about a baby.

The sheer fact of their existence provokes a sort of wonder. The utter dependence: the big eyes reaching up to comprehend the peering faces above them.

Partly, they point to God’s goodness in creation. It’s like the pronouncement from Psalm 139: if this is a God who “knit me together in my mother’s womb”, then this is a God of foreknowledge and care. The picture of God as a craftsman with intimate care over each child “intricately woven together in the depths of the earth” becomes clearer in light of their fragile, perfect fingers.

Partly, they point to the potential of humanity. There’s the delicacy of how they are tiny versions of what they will be—how they can look like mum or dad, while not looking like much at all. Because Psalm 139 continues: “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.” God knows every day – from the first yowling cries of birth, as days track upwards through birthday candles and dress-up parties, into angst and best friendships, to adulthood and modern rites of passage.

Partly, they point to the nature of family. There’s nine months of planning of a baby’s room, and imagining what the child will be like, will they take after their mum or dad, or their grandparents.

But after birth, that imagining is shoved aside by the reality of a small living thing, that is entirely in your care, and entirely dependent on you. In that moment of birth, the family tree grows deeper, and those possibilities are embodied into one tiny physical thing.

With the baby Prince George, succession is assured. A safety that almost seems anachronistic: such security meant a lot more in times when disease or war threatened the security of nations. We have only to look at the fraught kingship of Israel, in all its twists and turns, as bloodlines are extended, and then sometimes cut off. We have only to look at King David, who had his own royal baby—subsequently taken from him as a judgement for David’s covetous plotting.

All of the headlines, news, and photos about the royal baby stand in mark contrast to the birth of the true King of Kings. The news of the birth of Jesus went out only to humble shepherds, and wanderers from a foreign land. And yet, it still provoked a king into a jealous infanticide. The only photos taken were in the memory of a mother and a father, and who can tell what they thought of the potential of this crying baby boy.

Did his mother think of the angel’s promise: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High”? (Luke 1:32) No matter what they thought, they could not have predicted this, that not even the new royal baby could achieve: That this baby Jesus would be a king, who would step down from his throne into death, so that the kingdom of darkness would be dethroned, and lead his people into his own kingdom, into redemption, forgiveness, and hope (Phil 2:5-11; Col 1:13-14).

Featured image: used under Creative Commons licence, from Flickr: Carmen Rodriguez NSP