Handwriting on the Wall

The hand was just behind the lampstand, and the king could see it writing. He was so frightened that his face turned pale, his knees started shaking, and his legs became weak. ~Daniel 5:5b, 6

I had some dreams and visions while I was asleep one night, and I wrote them down.
~Daniel 7:2

Twenty-five weeks ago something miraculous happened. My daughter and my son-in-law conspired to conceive our first grandchild, a boy to be named Henry once he makes his appearance in our world sometime in late July.

A part of this miracle is that my daughter, who suffers from Lupus, was told that it would be very difficult to conceive and next to impossible without the help of modern medical science. They had visited one of the very best fertility specialists in Houston and they were just about to commence with the first protocol to make the impossible possible. Once the doctor learned the news that without his know-how a baby was on its way, this marketing specialist asked my daughter if she would tell her friends that she had merely walked across the threshold of his office and had become pregnant.

Last week, at twenty-four weeks, Henry became viable. In other words, if he were born prematurely he could survive, with medical assistance, and eventually lead a healthy and normal life, barring any complications. This was particularly exciting to me since I have been praying for Henry since I heard of his conception. In fact, the week that I heard I had a dream. I dreamt that this young man, our grandson, was taking my wife and me on a tour of a place already familiar to us but a place that is dear and special to our family. It obviously had become the same to him as an around fourteen year-old boy in my dream. I knew then that that baby was a boy and about ten weeks later it was confirmed.

I pray for Henry everyday. I pray for his health. I pray for his life once he is born. I pray for his safety and I pray for the young man and man that he will eventually become. I pray that he does not make the same errors that I have made and most of all I pray that he will be a passionate follower of Jesus, the Christ and Savior of us all.

The joy of Henry’s impending birth has been transforming us as will his life to our entire family. Yet, early this morning I woke up thinking of the millions of children that our modern society has murdered through abortion. I also thought of the millions of childless couples who suffer the loneliness and grief of an empty nest too early in their lives.

Something is wrong here. It is not just wrong but it is akin to the evil that has caused unspeakable atrocities during the history of mankind. Genocides and holocausts have come from the likes of this evil. For a time, these have seemed right to those who perpetrated them but eventually they were uncovered and literally unearthed as some of the most chilling acts of violence imaginable. That is what modern-day abortion is all about.

Our forward thinking and modern society justifies it by playing a game with us. First, the unborn baby is renamed tissue. Second, individual choice is made an idol and placed far above the sanctity of life. Third, those that disagree with the first two are shunned and ridiculed by intelligent and modern thinkers. Strangely, this formula sounds like one that took root in northern Europe less than one hundred years ago. As a culture we refuse to make that connection though. How deep this evil runs in our humanity that we repeat the atrocities of the past without remorse.

The image that will probably be the most appropriate one for our society is that of the red plastic desktop “Easy” button that has been popularized by an office supply retailer. You press and it and it responds with the words “That was easy.” We want the solutions to our problems to be just that, easy. We have divorced ourselves from all moral and spiritual moorings on a voyage that is real and treacherous. Yet, we really do not want to find our way for it too difficult. We prefer easy and quick solutions to deep and complex realities about ourselves and about others.

Maybe Henry can help us find the way. Maybe all of those children snuffed out of this life through abortion could have helped.

Plowing…..

I clipped this out of Smithsonian magazine a few years ago. I love the way it is written, the words and the pace, and I love what it says about life and faith….

“…..I live on a beautiful, difficult, windblown farm, and I have an old John Deere tractor. Starting it at 20 below takes the patience of Mr. Rogers. And yet, when it snows you must somehow coax the ice-cold engine to life and then you plow. When you’ve plowed and think you’re done, you put the tractor away, and it snows again. And then you have to plow again, and then it snows again. But the lesson I have learned is that if you keep on plowing after each snow, eventually you will get to spring.”