More from: "Out of the Mouth of Babes:"
"Pop Pop, have you ever seen a miracle?"
You should have seen their faces when I said:
"Dozens."
They lit up like Christmas trees. All excited and filled with curiosity...and wonder.
"Tell us!"
"I can do better than that, I can show you a few miracles."
They actually clapped their hands.
So I pointed to a picture on my iPhone of the the newest addition to our family. Little Valerie.
"That's not a miracle! That's Valerie! She's a Baby."
I laughed.
"Nope. That's a miracle!" And I pointed to both of them- one at a time.
"And you, and You. You are all miracles. As far as we know, you are the rarest thing in the Universe."
"What?"
"Yep. You are intelligent life. And as far as we know...the only intelligent life in the Universe. So you...all by yourself ...are a miracle."
"hmmm....?"
Then I said:
"Here is another miracle. See?"
I showed them a picture of a carrot.
"What? That's just a carrot."
"Nope. Another miracle. Carrots are so far above a single celled creature, that it is as far as we are from being a carrot. A miracle!"
They didn't realize how long it took for the Earth to just get a carrot going.
"Ready for another one?"
They were.
I showed them a single celled organism.
"So that's a miracle too?"
"Yep. The first one maybe. Because that is where we started from. Billons of years ago. That single celled organism is called "LUCA" Last Uniform Common Ancestor. And in Latin...it means "Light."
"You mean like...let there be light?"
"Could be."
It took 2 billion years before molecules became microbes. And another 2 Billion before plants. In fact, evidence suggest that plants are only about 470 million years old. So to get to a plant from a single cell...took billions of years. To get from a plant to us...well that only took several hundred million years. Primates have been around for just sixty million years. And us, maybe two million for the starter humans, and for more modern Humans...maybe half a million to 200,000 years.
"So we are like kind of new?"
"Yep. And here is another miracle."
"What now?"
"You are alive!"
"What? Are you kidding?"
"No. I am not. You are alive. More than 99.99 percent of everything that ever lived...is dead. You ...are alive. That's a miracle too."
Now they were very excited.
"Miracles are every where!!'
"Yes, and I have one more for you guys."
They leaned in. They wanted to hear this one.
"You can laugh. We know some animals experience joy, surprise and maybe even delight. But as far as we know, we are the only animal that can actually laugh at words, sounds, or facial expressions."
They laughed. Then that made them laugh again.
"Look at this! We are miracles making miracles happen!"
And they laughed again.
And I didn't even get the most marvelous miracle of all:
LOVE.