Ahh, children

The Pookies sat their first babies on Saturday, experiencing 1-yr old and 2-yr old boys and the feeding, changing, crying, playing, and sleeping entailed therein. We take comfort in what their parents and what our own logic tells us- that our ineffectiveness Saturday night and resultant feeling of helplessness diminishes or disappears with familiarity, and when our little boy is the age of their youngest, we will be more of a comfort to him than we were to other parents' children.

It's especially comforting to know that God does wonderful things within institutions of selflessness. Marriage, for example is an incomparable means to what I call the liberation of servitude, a humility of mind that frees you up to serve your beloved spouse unconditionally. Love keeps no record of wrongs.

Raising children is also a humbling experience. Yet, "Children are a blessing from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward… Blessed is the man who fills his quiver full of them!" (Psalm 127:3,5)

Today Al Mohler commented on the reign of selfishness in the hearts of those who eschew children for self and comfort in the context of Europe's endangered population replacement rates. Mohler shares insights from Azure magazine's Noah Pollack on http://almohler.com/

"The explanation for Europe's turn from reproducing its civilization is, in fact, as simple and self-contained as how children themselves are viewed. People avoid having children not because they are irreligious, lack financial means, fear the possibility of divorce, or carry university degrees. Rather, people do not have children because they do not want them: They find the curtailment of personal freedom and the assumption of the decades-long obligation inherent in parenthood unattractive, and they do not want to accept the basic restructuring of life that having a family requires. This is not a product of objective economic or social factors; rather, it is a subjective judgment about the meaning and purpose of one's life and the civilization in which that life is lived. It is, ultimately, a moral answer to a moral question: The question of the value people ascribe to their own families and their own heritage, in a broader cultural context."