Swaddled newborns always remind me of egg rolls or burritos, depending on the baby's size and the quality of the wrapping job. I look at my daughter sleep, armless and legless, with no motion except the quiverings and furrowings of her brow, and I think naturally of what "defenseless" really means.
In the world of cinema, when villains die, cowering and fearful, it's strange how we catch a glimpse of this same infant-like state that's common to the human experience. To some, it's a pitful and just end for a despicable person. To me, it's an emblematic moment that reveals the helplessness of all human life.
It's hard to compare a villain to an infant, but aren't the same critical components present? The soul, the image of God, original sin and original goodness? How then can anyone argue that there's any discontinuity anywhere within the lifespan that would allow us to differentiate between someone with a right to life and someone without that right?
Most of us, no matter how ugly, or evil, at one point had a mother or father look at us in the defenselessness of sleep. It was a look of love; a look that acknowledged and affirmed, a look that was sometimes tinged by the pain that one day we would suffer. As years passed, that mother or father may have forgotten those early intimate moments.
But even after thousands of lifetimes, the Heavenly Father still looks at us the same way. No matter who we are. For our part, we seem to have a knack for breaking that Father's heart. He will, for his part, keep swaddling us and watching us with love.
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