Cosmos

Your womb became more spacious than the heavens . . . .

She had been through a rough time, partly of her own making, and she had come home -- to the place where "if you have to go there, they have to take you in." We took her to the emergency room to be checked out, and the doctor found something none of us had expected.

During Lent in the Orthodox Church, at every Liturgy, we sing a hymn that draws out the mystery of the Incarnation:

All of creation rejoices in you, O full of grace,
The assembly of angels and the race of men,
O sanctified temple and spiritual paradise, glory of virgins,
From whom God was incarnate and became a child, our God before the ages.
He made your body a throne and your womb he made more spacious than the heavens.
All of creation rejoices in you, O full of grace, glory to you.

They took her in for an ultrasound and found a new little person, just a few weeks along, a 3 mm. black dot against the speckled white backdrop of the screen. In the image, the blood flow to the new life appeared as yellow and orange flashes, the color of fire.

My browser's home pages is the Astronomy Picture of the Day. Every day, I see pictures of earth, Mars, distant moons, dying suns and sprouting galaxies, and often, the starry sky looks just like the image of that 3 mm. "clump of cells," already unique, already of the same species God became, already in the grand scheme of things, Somebody.

"He made . . . your womb more spacious than the heavens . . . ."

Of course, it's uniquely true of Christ and the Theotokos, His mother, but if each person is made in the image of God, then each person is a universe, bigger on the inside than on the outside, bearing the "logos," the identifying mark of the Creator.

And every womb that bears a child is more spacious than the heavens.

"All of creation rejoices . . . ."