Respect All Life … And God's Plan For It
If you have read the bottom of this column, you know that my husband and I have been blessed with an abundance of grandchildren. I always figured we might have 12 to 16. Obviously, God had other plans for which we are both grateful. When the first 13 arrived, we often heard the comment, “Wow! I bet your Christmases are exciting.” But somewhere around that number, enthusiasm began to wane and the question became, “How many children do you have?” Division ensued. Currently, the number averages 5 apiece, but that will change in August.
We are a planned society. We save for a new car, a new house, our children’s education, and our retirement. None of that is intrinsically negative. In fact, according to bankruptcy statistics in our country, more people need to be planning ahead and saving before spending. I am definitely on that page. However, there are also times when we must recognize that all the well-intentioned plans we make don’t hold a candle to what God has in store “for those who love Him.”
Shortly after I married, my mother told me that having choices sometimes complicates life more than not. She was talking about artificial birth control methods and how it forced many of us baby boomers to sweat the decision about the size of our families. After all, shouldn’t we consider the cost of diapers, braces, education, food, phones, and on and on. Many of us did and due to those frightening monetary figures and other factors, 2 or 3 children was the preferred number.
That mindset is now so instilled in our society that often people react with confusion, shock or even disdain toward those families who choose to let God ultimately be in charge of their family size. However, I have noticed a small upturn in families who have chosen the Catholic approved method of birth control, Natural Family Planning. Using that and trusting that God is the Supreme decision maker, they place their faith in His plan. As we have read in Jeremiah 1:4-5, the Lord said, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you.”
In other words, every child that is conceived, planned or unplanned by their parents, is planned by God. There are no mistakes! However, God also knew from the beginning of time about those children whose lives would be eliminated before they had the chance to sound their first earthly cry. How that must break His heart. The only consolation for such tragedy is that every one of those unborn children is now a saint in heaven.
It is ironic and I don’t believe accidental that in countries such as Japan and China, where laws dictated the birth of only 1 or 2 children per family, they (along with all the developed countries of the world) are experiencing what Peter G. Peterson, a U.S. economist referred to as the aging crisis. In his book, “Gray Dawn: How the Coming Age Wave Will Transform America - and the World,”he refers to a United Nations Population Division report from March 2000 that warned of “drastic fiscal consequences of an impending population implosion.”
Without going into a multitude of his statistics, Peterson (who wrote purely from economic and social viewpoints) explains that the diminishing family size in developing countries will cause a major financial and social crisis in the not-so-distant future. Understand, I am not advocating having large families for the purpose of supporting a country’s economy. No, what I want to illustrate once again is a familiar theme that has been regularly repeated throughout the Bible. We mere mortals, due to our pride and our lack of confidence in God, continue to create problems in our lives and the world. Will we ever trust God enough to know that HIs plan is always the best plan?
I cannot fathom my life without Zach, Emma, Matthew, Luke, Dominic, Noah, Ava, William, Lilly, Oliver, Louis, Gabriel, Lucy, Ella, Emmett, Leo, Scarlett, Samuel, Cecilia, Knox, and number 21. Every person born into this world is a unique image of God’s presence and has a singular role to play in His plan. Every life is a precious gift that God bestows on mankind. We can demonstrate our gratitude by celebrating all life from conception to natural death.
