I love looking at baby pictures of friends’ grandchildren, studying pudgy faces in search of resemblances to parents and grandparents. God often weaves physical characteristics through the generations in a way that’s familial but new.

Grandparents have the delightful perspective of being one-generation-removed from the new babies that arrive. We’re involved with our grands, to be sure, but are no longer on parenting’s center stage.  Watching from the wings, we can observe similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses that parents are often too busy to see.

As a young mom, my focus was getting the job done, whatever the moment demanded. Pausing to contemplate the inner-child required a slow-down I couldn’t afford. Now, as a grandma, I have the luxury of watching and listening. The more I study children, whether my family’s or others’, the more I appreciate God’s handiwork, particularly his unending design creativity.

Despite similarities through the generations, he never runs out of ways to make each individual unique. After creating trillions of people, he’s still enjoying his work-in-wombs, knitting together DNA strands of infinite variety.

Our family is looking forward to February, 2012, when we’ll get a look at what God has been up to for 9 months within my daughter Linnea. Who is he sending to join our ranks? What family characteristics will come through, and what fresh ideas will God have woven into this new person?

Craving answers to these questions is what’s partially responsible for Nate and I having 7 children. We couldn’t wait to see who else he might put together and send our way. I wish there’d have been more baby-bearing years so we could have had more children, because as our 7 have grown into honorable adults, I continue to be impressed with evidence of God’s creative flare in each of them.

I believe when we delight in the children God sends us, whether by birth, adoption, guardianship or friendship, we’re bringing pleasure to the One who made them. We can study children the same way the Creator stood back and studied the first human ever made. Just like him we can say, “You’re very good!”

This week God handed me a remarkable new thought. Nate has met and gotten to know our miscarried child.

It was a goose-bump moment for me and probably for Nate, too, when they first connected. Heaven is all about relationships, both backwards (past-borns) and forward (future-borns). On earth we’re limited to knowing only 3 or maybe 4 generations, but heavenly camaraderie will have no such limits.

We’ll get to see God-initiated traits and features threading their way through every generation, all the way back to Adam and Eve. And because he made us all in his image, maybe we’ll even be able to see attributes that began as far back as the Father, Son and Spirit! Awesome thought…

“Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous.” (Psalm 139:14)