My wife miscarried early in her first pregnancy. This was a tragedy. My sister delivered a stillborn full-term baby girl. This, too, was a tragedy. Tears were shed after each, but the magnitude of my sister’s loss was comparatively far greater than that experienced by my wife and I.
I don’t know what lives either of those children might have led, but I sometimes imagine how our lives and the world might have been changed had their promise and blessing been fulfilled. Their journeys to life, though, were interrupted for reasons known only to God. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord… and blessed be new life with all of the hope and promise of the future. New life comes to us at the conclusion of a spectrum of blessing that begins with conception and is fulfilled with the delivery of that new life into the world. For some though, that journey can rapidly change to a spectrum of tragedy with a new life being aborted. Not by a doctor or any human intervention, but rather by the unknowable will of God.
Regardless of whether you walk in the Light and Life of Christ and accept His gift of salvation, or whether you follow another path, our time on this plane of existence was never promised to be easy. Similarly, the journey to life is often echoed by the journey to death that many of us have witnessed and may experience. As disease and decay take their toll, the body begins its inexorable decline until it can no longer accommodate your spirit. It represents a spectrum of hope for those who have trusted Jesus, and a spectrum of tragedy for those who haven’t. In either case, it is ended by the unknowable will of God.
Secularists would remove God from the equation, suggesting that it is simply letting nature run its course. In doing so, they allow themselves the liberty to intervene in nature’s progress so as to exercise their will in lieu of that of a higher authority. This changes each of these spectra to a spectrum of horror. The magnitude of the horror swells or ebbs at the time chosen for intervention. Intervening on the day after conception is a far lesser magnitude of evil than intervening on the day of delivery. Intervening on the day after diagnosis of a terminal illness is a far greater magnitude of evil than intervening on the day life is slipping away. You see, the horror grows when intervention comes closer to the fullness of life. Horror takes the place of tragedy when evil acts presage the abortion of life. And with the horror comes guilt.
Remember always that no depravity that man commits surprises God, though I am certain that our choices often grieve His heart. Remember that at the time of the crucifixion of Christ there was only one person alive on the earth. Everyone else was dead in sin and trespasses. The depravity of man in killing this one man, Jesus, overshadows everything we had done before or since. But in killing this one man, we washed ourselves in His innocent blood and bought our deliverance from all our depravities.
We live in a fallen world, though in a world imbued with hope for a coming and brighter day. I cling to that hope, and so it is that I pray that we would zealously guard the spectrum of blessing that is fulfilled in new life; despite the possibility of tragedy that it holds. It is why I also cling to the spectrum of hope as old life ebbs. I would not allow my will to supersede the will of God and I condemn the hubris of anyone else that would so presume. For those who would create or defend a spectrum of horror, I pray that their consciences would be pricked to limit their interventions to when the magnitude of the impact of their evil act is least. I take solace in knowing that nothing can thwart the will of God and that He will judge evil.
In a dry and thirsty land 