Our life is a gift from God, what we do with our life is our gift to God.
So reads the signature line of my emails. I don't know who said it, no one does, but it strikes at my heart with the truth of it.
Life is a Gift... a Miracle...
Anyone who has a basic understanding of genetics should see how strange, bizarre and impossible life really is.
The complicated processes of forming the sex cells. Breathtakingly low odds of conception. The thousands of complications that may arise in the 9 months the child is living inside the mother.
My biology teacher, a former microbiologist, once said that the odds are such that not being able to carry a child should be the norm, not the other way round.
And after birth, the wonder of the body developing properly, the survival against all the bacteria and viruses this world throws at the body, not to mention the millions of other ways a child, or an adult, can die.
Life is a Gift.
Last night, I read Francine Rivers wonderful book The Atonement Child. The story struck to my core because it's one I've often thought about and wondered what I would do in that situation.
Here's the story in a nutshell: a Christian college student (Dynah)'s life is going well. She's loved by her family, attending one of the dream college, engaged to the dream guy, works at a great place. Basically, everything is perfect. That is, until about a chapter in. When she gets raped.
Left reeling from the shock, horror, guilt and shame of it all, Dynah struggles to pick up the pieces. The few people who are close to her help her to hide it, thinking to spare her the embarrassment of announcing the truth to people. But her fiancé is pulling away. He sees are as defiled and is struggling to see past it. The months slip away, and things are beginning to look up, when Dynah realizes she hasn't had a single period since the rape - she's pregnant.
Her fiancé demands she gets an abortion, her school "asks her to leave" more concerned about the fiancé's prospects. Her father insists she gets an abortion. And Dynah... Dynah is left wondering what to do, where to go and trying to work out just what God is doing to her with everything.
Now, I won't spoil the ending (if you want to find out, go read the book - trust me, it's worth it!), but reading it did remind me about the questions I've faced on this topic, the articles and blogs I've read, and basically the whole abortion debate.
And I'm reminded once again of Ann Voskamp's words to her son about how nearly he was aborted and the joy she has that she didn't. I'm reminded of that comment I once heard about how a the abortion debate reduces life to the rights of the mother or the rights of the child, and ignoring the fact that the odds mean life isn't a right, but a privilege.
And this is probably easy for me to say having never faced an abortion, never even come close to being pregnant. But I hope that if I was ever in a situation like Dynah's, or like Ann's, or like the millions of nameless women who face an abortion, have had an abortion, I would be able to say no, to live what I believe now.
To live in the knowledge that Life truly is a Gift from God.
To understand that by rights I should have died as a baby, my allergy stunting my growth and causing me problems. To understand that by rights I should have died age three, when the pneumonia nearly put me in hospital - and I was only kept out because of the medical know-how in my family. And don't get me started on all the other times I could have died, maybe would have died, but I didn't.
To understand that it is only by the Grace of God that I still move on this incredible planet, the gas covered rock that hurtles round and round a ball of flames. To understand that really, it is through Grace that I have a chance of a future.
And to know that I do not have the right to deny that Grace to anyone. Not to a child who might be placed within my womb, and not to a mother who is childless because of an abortion.
Because Grace does more than just let us breathe and think. Grace allows us to dream and to climb and to run and to dance. Grace is about more than just being, it's about living, it's about letting go. It's about a God so big that He broke Himself for a people so small.
Grace is about being a filthy, ugly, defiled being caught up in the loving, beautiful, pure arms of God. Grace is about being filled with His love and His Grace and His Righteousness and pouring it out on those who need it.
Grace is about following Jesus and being a Friend of Sinners - confident that anyone can be a Child of God.
Grace is about living out the knowledge that Life is a Gift right here, right now, every time I meet the Miracle of a living, breathing person.
