If I am
September 28th, 2018:
If I am pregnant, I am going to take it day-by-day. I am
going to enjoy having a baby with me, a real child. And let it matter. But know
that I have no control over this child’s life. I can make sure my body is a
healthy vessel, but that promises me nothing. Life is in God’s hands. He gives
life when He wills. He takes life when He wills. There is nothing more to it.
There is no getting around it. We pray, and we should pray, but the honest fact
about prayer is that prayer is FIRSTLY about changing US, not changing God.
Yes, we petition God, and the Bible gives us examples where prayers influence
what God does. Abraham. Moses. Elijah. Nevertheless, prayer is about us
communing with the Almighty God, and when that happens, we are inevitably
changed. Thus, the first and main aspect of prayer is becoming more like
Christ, more like the original sinless creature we would have been without the
Fall and will one day be in Heaven with our God and our Savior Jesus Christ. So
life….life belongs to God. Eli’s life was created by God. It took 10 months of
us trying to have a baby. And then God created Eli. Aden was created by God. It
took 3 months of us sort of trying but not really taking it too serious. And
God created Aden. And Aden lived in my womb for 7.5 weeks. And I believed he
was alive and dreamed dreams for him for 9.5 weeks. And I was changed forever
when God ended his life.
A year ago, I said I needed a theology to account for the
fact that God knits together babies that will die in the womb because they are
broken or have something “wrong” with them. I even agonized over having to use
the word “wrong” to describe such babies. I knew I had to figure out what that
meant. How that worked. How is the sinless God, the Sovereign, loving, good God
allowing children to be conceived and desired knowing that they are going
conceived with genetic complications which make their growth in utero
impossible? What is that? I couldn’t see past the pain of it and all the grief
a year ago. Today, I can understand it more. This happens because this is the
material that God deals with in the world today. Because of the Fall, God works
with broken, sinful, fallen, material, matter, cells, dna, humans. Thus is
demonstrated that that this world, THIS life, is not ever meant to be the one
where we truly flourish and LIVE. We are meant to live with GOD in complete
communion and surrender and obedience and freedom- all those things at once.
The Fall corrupted Eden… and that was lost, Paradise Lost. So while living in
this world presently is a gift, honestly it is a far better thing for the
children who never have to experience this even but go straight to Glory with
God for all eternity. Jesus Christ did validate the importance of human
existence by BECOMING human, but He did that as a matter to make a way FOR
redemption and RESTORATION. Had not God known that humans would ultimately need
a Savior, there would have been no Jesus existing from the beginning of the
world as well. God created us that He might display His glory- the lavishness
of His character, that He loves, how MUCH He loves. We are stuck here in our
microcosm of pain and scraping by and suffering… and this world even when it
gives us glimpses of glory, is such a hard place to be in. We are not supposed
to set our eyes on this being our end-game. Our end-game is another world with
our creator.
So, if God has knit together another life, a small little
life barely two weeks old, then this life matters. I don’t know if he or she
will get to live on earth. I don’t know how long he or she will live in my
womb. But she is another person that God has knit together to lavish His love
upon. If she dies in utero, He will lavish His love upon her as she enters His
kingdom- skipping the pain and suffering of the Fallen world and going straight
to glory. If she is born alive, she will be a part of the reclaiming and
redeeming of this Fallen world as God works to make it, all of creation, groan
and groan for the return of our Lord and Savior- for the redemption of all that
is disjointed, for the undoing of all that is done wrongly, for the joy that
reaches to a height that surpasses the depths of all the pain ever experienced.
He or she will be like me, a person on a journey to navigate this rough place
until we meet our Savior. He or she will have to learn of the thing of faith…
It is a gift of God. He or she will receive the gift of faith I believe, if
he/she is born because her parents or grandparents or godparents will instruct
her and tell her of the great God who created her and that her purpose in life
COMES from Him and Him alone, not from any of us or anything she does. That no
matter what, no matter how much she fails or falls or succeeds, she matters
because she IS. And she is loved because SHE IS. HE LOVES US because He loves us.
And nothing more.
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