TOUCHING LIFE
From: Daybreak with God

Preserve my life according to your love" (Psalm 119:88)

The sounds of the delivery room receded to a quiet murmur of post-delivery activities and near-whispered comments between the parents. The father, gowned, with a hair net and masked face, leaned forward, touching their child who was cuddled to the mother, She looked down on the baby who was scowling, her eyes tightly shut. With a sense of awe, the mother stretched forth one finger to gently smooth the child's wrinkled forehead. The need to touch her daughter was urgent, yet she was careful.

Development psychologists who have examined the process of childbirth and witnessed thousands of deliveries inform us that the need to gently touch one's newborn is a near-universal impulse crossing all cultural boundaries. Obviously, we have been created with an innate need to physically connect with our offspring.

In this sense we are very much like God.In "The Creation of Adam," one of Michaelangelo's famous frescoes that decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he portrays the hand of Adam outstretched with a finger pointed. Opposite to it you see the hand of God in a similar pose reaching towards him. The two fingertips are nearly touching. No image more clearly reveals the Father's heart. He is ever reaching out His hand to touch, with gentleness and love, those who are created in His own image.

Mothers and God share a common bond then, do they not? Both possess a deep reverence for the life that they have brought into the world. Both yearn to touch those made in their image.