(June 1, 2003)

Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow

Some of God's biggest blessings are small enough to fit in your hands. My "moment closest" this week came during church on Sunday. I confess, I overslept (again!), and I arrived late to church. In the summer months, our church switches to just one service on Sundays. Even though during the week I'm up early, for some reason I'm having trouble getting up for a 9:00 am service, when my subconscious mind knows that Sunday service is at 10:15!

This past Sunday, I arrived during the New Testament reading. Not wanting to disturb the lesson, instead of entering the large doors at the back of the church, I quietly took a seat in the "family room" just inside the narthex. Okay, it's the "cry room," but we have several parishioners who think that's a terrible name for the glass-enclosed room. But it is where family's with infants and crying babies go for the service.

This Sunday, as usual, the Costello family was in the room, with their two precious twin babies. I don't know why we genteely bicker about what to call the room — as far as the twins are concerned, it's the Costello room. The twins are about six months old and so precious as only twin miracles from God can be.

They sleep through most of the service still. My moment closest came when we rose to sing the doxology. Dad Costello had the boy twin in his arms, who was awake at this point. And what a blessing it was to watch as this young, proud father sang all the word's not up to the ceiling, but directly into the eyes of his infant son, who beamed back, shining his little light of lover up at his father:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise him all creatures here below.
Praise him above ye heavenly host.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

If only we all could look up into the eyes of our Heavenly Father with the same absolute trust and complete love as that infant looked up at his father. I know we would see the same unconditional love smiling down on us as the love that lit the face of this earthly father while singing God's praises to his son.