Simon Says ...

Have you ever held a new-born child?   It is an experience without peer.   A tiny life.   A person in miniature.   Holding a new-born for the first time, I was told by her parents to support the baby’s head – a baby’s head is too large for her neck to support at first.   New-borns do very little – they cry, feed, sleep and poo.   There are no smiles or coos to reward the parent or visitor.   And yet it is one of life’s greatest experiences.   Parents are driven by biology to protect and nurture their child, but non-parents too can understand the imperative to care for the bundle of warmth that barely fills a hand.   To hold a new-born child is to hold something that is simultaneously immensely fragile, utterly dependent and unimaginably precious. Christmas is when we mark the time that God took flesh in a new-born child.   God became fragile, dependent and precious and was born to an unmarried teenager.   S...