I recall many years ago, prior to my conversion, sitting in my bedroom very sad that I had suffered an early miscarriage. I hadn’t taken a pregnancy test to confirm it, but I had suspected that I was pregnant. When my body went through the experience, it was obvious that something out of the ordinary was happening. My overwhelming grief, confirmed that this was more than my regular monthly occurrence, more than an instance of disappointment that my husband and I were not going to be parents.
However, there was irony in the moment when, sometime during the afternoon, a friend came to visit and sat on the bed next to me. She had just returned from having an abortion. She was relieved, but had very obviously not been through a run-of-the-mill day. We both had experienced a loss, but our motives and reactions were quite different. This was over forty years ago and I remember a latent anger within me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Yesterday, history repeated itself in an unexpected way. Two couples I know lost a child. One couple, already with eight children, lost their ninth in an early miscarriage. The second was grieving the passing of their nineteen-day-old preemie, whose heart was not strong or healthy enough to survive. And the irony? There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people yesterday who like my acquaintance of forty plus years ago, were experiencing the aftermath of taking the life of an unborn person. In all cases, regardless of motives or beliefs, people are sad or traumatized, and little ones are no longer alive.
I wsh I had something insightful to say that would make the ugliness of abortion evident to all and have it end today. I wish I had something comforting to say to those who grieve the loss of the babies they so dearly wanted, so that their burden of grief is lessened. However, maybe through all this God is giving us a picture, a vivid picture of a reality that we MUST grasp in order for us as a society to be standing righteously before Him. Just maybe, God intends for us to feel the grief of those families who wanted children that are no more, to convict us to abandon our relativism as a culture that says whether a child is wanted justifies his/her existence. Maybe the message is that only God has the authority and jurisdiction to give life and to take it, and the obscene practice of abortion must end.
Regardless of how children died yesterday, those precious ones have not ceased to exist for they are eternal beings, very much within the care and providence of God. I hope that this reality will comfort those who mourn their loss and bring to repentance those who have foolishly determined for themselves their “right” to set the terms for life.
The Kingdom-Driven Family 