Her mother left her in a park, in a city in south-central China, with a note giving her birth date and hour. I've seen the note, red paper with minute precise scratchings that mean nothing to me, but which are her only connection to her birth parents. She was 10 days old. For the last year, she's been loved by a Chinese foster mother who dressed her and fed her and cared for her and, in a final act of stunning love, handed her over to my friends, who brought her home to this little undistinguished Ontario town, not quite a month ago.

She is a long, long way from home, and yet she is home here. This is where she will grow up, in this big old brick rectory. She will play under these trees, running through the grass on this big sloping lawn, with this dog and these cats and her much bigger sisters. That cool stone church across the old graveyard from her house will likely become her other house, where she goes with her father, keeping him company. It's apt to become as familiar to her as her own kitchen. And I and all the other grownups in her parish will be her sort-of aunts and grandparents, uncles and cousins.

I find it endlessly hard to believe, but she seems to like this big ungainly stranger: she stumps determinedly toward me and lifts her arms to be picked up. She weighs half what my babies did at the same age, and yet she's perfectly healthy--just very small. She sits contentedly in the curve of my arm, playing with the silver cross I wear. Her mother hands me a bowl of chunked-up tomato and a fork, and I feed her, until she decides to take over for herself. I marvel at the minuteness and perfection of her brown hands as she deftly fields tomato bits and tucks them into her tiny mouth.

She is at the very beginning of her journey: just now she's at the water's edge, infinitely curious, ready to play, dabbling her toes in it. It will be a while before she has the skills, strength, maturity and competence to set sail. During these next years, her parents, in their love, will be helping her make ready. She's clearly intent on learning, as though she already knows what she needs to have in hand for the voyage. Now she points to this and that, wanting to know the proper name of everything. Today her father taught her which end of a shovel to use in her sandbox.

Last week I had a birthday, one of those significant birthdays that end in a 0; her parents have invited me over for dinner in celebration. I look at this small black-haired girl and think how long it's been since I toddled around my mother's kitchen, lifting my arms to be picked up--a lifetime ago, by the standards of most of this world and human history. Since I turned out into open waters, almost two generations of small children have grown up and set sail themselves. Some of their voyages are calm and prosperous; others are, or have been, or will be marked by storms and shipwrecks. My own trip has been more in the latter category, but lately the waters seem to be calming and there are augeries of clear skies and pleasant landfalls..

There's a secret, one of the great quiet joys of being Christian: that in the second part of life, we know where we're going to fetch up. Those with lesser gods will find that they don't guide a person back to land; that they can be more encumbrance than help; that in the end, you'll have to toss them overboard or they'll sink you. Even sadder, there are the ones whose only god is Self. For them, poor terrified souls, the journey turns into a terror, as they sail off the edge of the world and into oblivion, for if your god is Self, when you die, your god dies, and what is there left? For us, though, mortality is very real, but it isn't terrifying, because we know that there's something on the other side of it--something as richly different from this life as this life is from life in the womb.

I know that while this child is still in the harbour of her parents' arms, I have turned my own course and am now heading home. I plan to take my time about it, if possible. I'd like to see this one grow all the way up. Life seems full of interesting people, things to try, books to read and write. The water looks smoother now and very inviting--but it's good to know that I still know how to handle myself in a storm.

But of one thing I am very sure. In a few years or many, whenever I make my landfall, I will find myself much where this child is now: looking forward to new discoveries, pointing at things and wanting to know their names, eager to learn and grow. There will be others there who will be adults to my infancy, to whom I can go in trust and love. I will be able to hold up my arms and ask for my father to lift me and hold me safe in love. Whenever God wills; but until then, I've got places to go and other ports to visit. I'm looking forward to it all.

May her voyage be sunny and serene, full of delightful events, with starlit nights and days full of favorable winds. May the storms she goes through be few and not too serious. And let her remember always what I found out, looking back at my own voyage: that she is wrapped around in God's love, whatever befalls.