For the first six years of my life, I had my parents all to myself, just the three of us. That was truly glorious. My mother played and had fun with me, my father invented all kinds of stories exclusively for me, and there were those joyful rides in my father’s bike in the night. We would all get on the bike and off we would go to M. G. road. And I would be simply stunned by the dazzling lights of the shops. And at night it was delightful to cuddle up between my parents, to feel that they were right with me and I need not fear anything. Those days were perfectly heavenly. But when I began going to school and I started meeting children of my own age, things started looking difficult for me. My little comrades did not understand why my eyes were so different from theirs, and so they began making fun of me. The children in my apartment began avoiding me and my school-mates started calling me a ghost. At last I could bear it no longer and I went home crying. “Mother!, Mother!”, I called as I ran into my apartment, tears streaming down my little cheeks. My mother was in the balcony and I rushed into her loving arms. My head was soon comfortably placed in her lap and I was sobbing my miseries into her sympathetic ears.

“Why do my friends keep avoiding and teasing me”? I asked. “It is not fair”.

“Hannah, I know it is not fair”, my mother said in that sympathetic way of hers. And for the next five minutes she tried her level best to comfort me, but nothing worked. I just wouldn’t smile or forget the bitter experience. Suddenly a bright idea came to her and she said brightly, “Hannah, why don’t you ask God for a little brother”?

I sat up alertly. Such a thought had never entered my mind.

“You see”, my mother continued, “If you had a little brother, he would stand up for you and would not let anyone tease you”. If anyone made fun of you, he would boldly say, “don’t you make fun of my sister”! “Don’t you think a little brother would be nice, you could be the best of friends and he would share his secrets with you and you could talk and play with him”.

After a considerable amount of thinking, I straightened up and I looked at my mother with shining eyes. “Mother, I badly want a little brother and from today I am going to ask Jesus to give me a cute little brother”.

And I did keep my word, I prayed everyday for a little brother. But there was a grave problem, the doctors seriously told us that my mother could have no more children. Though I was too small to understand it at that time, I later found out that my mother had a disease called polycystic ovary. Before human eyes, my prayers were all in wane and I would have no little brother. But I childishly stuck to the belief that Jesus would give me my little brother. Soon my parents were also fervently praying for a little son who we named Hanok, from the Biblical name ‘Enoch’. We used to say in our family prayer, “Jesus, thank you for giving us our Hanok”. This might have seemed absurd to an out-sider, but we firmly believed that Hanok was actually in our midst. And at last that miracle happened! The thing that the doctors had considered impossible happened! My mother became pregnant. All those who knew about it asked us “how can you be so sure that the baby is a boy?” and we calmly answered them “we are sure because we asked God for a little boy.

Finally, the little brother arrived on April 7th. And then, what a rejoicing there was!, I fairly jumped up and down in delight. When my father gathered the little babe into his arms, the first thing he whispered in the babe’s ears were these words, “Thank you, Jesus”.

And Hanok grew up and today he is a healthy eight year old boy, and I am proud to say that he never allows anyone to tease or make fun of me. Today Hanok is one of the family and I have the most glorious time of my life laughing and fighting with him and I still feel very happy to think Hanok was a miraculous gift that Jesus gave us, a beautiful gift especially and exclusively for us.

Babies are those treasured gifts that god bestows on those who are much beloved to him and whom he is sure can look after the angels sent right from heaven. So let us receive these little heavenly, angelic flowers who have God’s kiss on their soft cheeks with open arms and joyful hearts