Nothing jump-starts some people’s religious faith like the birth of a child. Even for those who don’t embrace formal religion, childbirth can be the catalyst for a spiritual awakening.
John B. Phillips, a retired Chattanooga attorney, was so moved by the births of his first two grandchildren last year that he decided to write a Bible-based parenting book.
“I personally think that childbirth is a miracle – maybe the only miracle one experiences in life,” says Phillips, 68, who has two 1-year-old grandsons. “Birth is a very mysterious, powerful thing.”
Phillips’ book, “A Time to be Born: Meditations on the Birth of a Child,” (available at www.john-b-phillips.com) was published in October and includes 12 chapters – he calls them “meditations” – based on parenting stories from the Bible.
Phillips said the book began as a journal, a way of gathering Bible lessons to share with his own adult children. He soon realized the Bible had relatively little to say about child-rearing; the books of the New Testament, for example, are bereft of stories about the early childhood of Jesus. Slowly, though, Phillips began to construct a mosaic of Bible stories that could be a source of insight for new parents.