I was thinking about a post I wrote a couple of days ago where I mentioned that our new baby, Sparrow, was already a “person”.

In spite of her “newness”, she already is a big part of the way towards being who she is going to be.

I don’t understand genetics.  I don’t really have a handle on the mysteries of nature.

There are a lot of things that I don’t really understand.

But I think I understand that there’s more than just a lump of clay… to be formed by us…. laying in our arms when we hold her.

There’s more to her than that.

Somewhere in all that young spirit and sinew, there’s more to her than meets the eye.

I was thinking about acorns, too.

Can you imagine the power to be found in an acorn?

Expressed, an acorn’s power can blot out the sun…it can topple huge buildings…cross oceans.

An acorn is a powerful little nut.

Sometimes, I feel like a powerful little nut…but I guess that’s a different story.

I don’t see what something really is.  I see what I think it is, carpeting a forest floor, just another…another amongst hundreds of others…nondescript in juxtaposition to all the other acorns next to it.

I lose track of miracles.  Everyday miracles are hard to notice.

I take them for granted.

But think about this: an acorn, for some strange reason, is allowed to begin to grow next to a strong building.  It grows and spreads its roots, grows under and around this building, its root system as large as what we see above, spreading and growing…until….until…the foundation of the building starts to crack a little.

It starts to crack…then starts to crack a little bigger…bigger, bigger, bigger as the little acorn “expresses” itself…then, if things are allowed to take its full course, the building might be damaged enough to come down completely. Something small like an acorn could bring down something we’d built to be strong.  That’s wild.

This little acorn had all that in it all the time.  That’s pretty amazing.  Who would have thought that?

It was a little round seed, laying on the forest floor, that I walked over….maybe I even pushed it down a little, pushed it into the ground by walking all over it…maybe I was the one who helped it grow?  I doubt I would have noticed…after all, it was only another acorn.

So, if I recognize the power in a little acorn, and I recognize the miracle of a child, and I can make the connection between potential in a seed and potential in a young life…then all children deserve a little more respect every day, right? They deserve respect because of who they are…and who they can become.

I think that’s a conclusion that wouldn’t be hard to come by.

I’m not saying that little babies should rule the roost.  I won’t let someone who weighs less than 10 lbs boss me around.

I’m not going to let that happen.

I may run when she cries…let her keep us up at night sometimes…but she’s not the boss of me.

She’s only “another” acorn…she’s just another child.

But, in her own small way, she’s a builder of worlds.