As I write this, my son is hustling my daughter-in-law to the hospital to have their twins.

I'll be hustling there soon myself — as will my ex-wife and other relatives, both strange and estranged.

Something about newborns can pull together the most splintered group of folks.

Maybe that's why the "Great Uniter" made his first appearance on earth as a newborn.

In one of my favorite scenes from Dickens (I'd look up the novel if I had more time), the narrator walks into a room and begins to describe the warm, loaf of bread in a basket near the fire. But wait, he says, it isn't a loaf of bread at all. It's a newborn baby.

Newborn babies are like fresh loaves of bread. The aroma may be a little different at times and there's no crust on them, but I think Dickens got it right.

Just as a loaf of fresh bread can draw people around a table to talk and share their lives with each other; and just as a fresh loaf of bread prompts souls to offer a word of thanks and ask for special blessings, so with fresh, warm newborn babies.

The birth of a baby is like a Thanksgiving dinner. Nobody complains that they had to do so much while so-and-so didn't do enough. No one gets upset when somebody shows up a little late. We're just glad they made it at all.

Like good bread, new babies soften the moment. They force us to take the focus from ourselves and focus on what we have in common, the "wondrous little stranger" in our midst.

Like good bread, babies fill us with cheer.

They bring a sense of well-being and good will to the table.

In the presence of a newborn baby, people put away their differences. They share. They help.

And along with writer Henri Nouwen, we realize that "Life is precious. Not because it is unchangeable, like a diamond, but because it is vulnerable, like a little bird."

We realize that if the Kingdom of Heaven is made up of little children, the crib side of a newborn is about as close as we're going to get to it in this life.

And we realize — for a few moments at least — that beneath the grit and grime, the world is good, that beneath the hard crust of our personalities we are still soft, that people, at their best, can be as warm and rich as loaves of bread.

In our brightest moments, we, too, can become as the little child before us.

Now, it's off to the hospital.

E-MAIL: jerjohn@desnews.com