Traveling today on an airplane next to the infamous crying. Screaming fidgety babies, while annoying, don’t bother me that much. Granted it’s unpleasant, but having had 2 kids myself I have the expertise to educate the baby-less in this little known fact.

Believe it or not, one cannot reason with an infant. This always makes me consider why people are so intolerant of the mini human. It is selfishness and hypocrisy to the nth degree. Why? First off, we’ve all been the crying baby at least once in their life. Somewhere somebody’s memory of traveling was the horrific non-stop screaming of a baby, and that baby was you!

We don’t remember being the out of control infant because we were too young and self absorbed to recall or frankly to care, kind of a metaphor for our adult life and how God puts up with us huh? The crying baby really only understands one thing at this stage in their life, whatever they want they want now!

Being as they are unable to articulate their need, from hunger, to can you remove this foreign substance from my pants; they do all they know how to do…scream.

Is it selfish, of course? Because frankly they aren’t aware there are others in the universe yet. What they have learned quickly is if you feel hungry and scream, suddenly your needs are met and the hunger goes away. As we mature some of us are taught that what we desire doesn’t suddenly become out “right”.

The Christian concept of putting others needs ahead of yourself is what sets us apart from our nature. We discipline ourselves to become servants to all in order to demonstrate what Christ did for humanity. It’s a lot of responsibility to be “like Christ” Especially because if we are late and something bad happens, we get fired, or get a ticket, or miss the game, which is why God invented cable TV.

When Jesus was late and somebody DIED, He had the option to revive them. Showing off? Sure. But if I was the Son of God stuck amongst a bunch of knuckleheads, I suppose a few miracles would help pass the time as well as set up some interesting dinner conversation. “Peter what did you do today? Oh I fished on the sea, and you Lord? Oh ..I walked across it.

So in the future when you come across the crying baby, perhaps the Christian thing to do would be to see if you could help the poor mother or frustrated dad. The least we can do is be compassionate, understanding and a little less self-absorbed.

The irony is these “adults” that sigh in disgust, keep looking back in anger and loathing are actually acting more like babies than the crying one. You see the crying baby doesn’t have a choice, we do.