Friday, August 26, 2022

Children are a blessing from the Lord...

Do we believe what the Scriptures say about children?

  • Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
    (Psalm 127:3-5).
  • All your children shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the peace of your children. (Isaiah 54:13).
  • Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. (Jeremiah 1:5). At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:1-3).  
  • I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth (3 John 1:4). 
  • But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:16).
  • “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” (Mark 9:37)
  • When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world (John 16:21).

Children are a heritage from the Lord, the more the better!  Peace is His gift to the children He knit together in the womb of the mother.  Children are greatest and great the children who walk in the way of the Lord.  Children belong to the Kingdom and our service to them is to God.  The cry of childbirth is joy.  I could go on but I will stop here.  Perhaps I have forgotten to include the best and your own favorite verses on children.  These words are not just nice words.  God means them.  I am not at all sure we do anymore.

We live in a world in which being pregnant is considered a burden and a problem -- something that needs to be fixed by getting rid of the child in the womb.  In our age, having a child is about the last thing you want to result from sex.  At this time, people are working feverishly to try and figure out how to save women from children and men from having to support the women with child.  A significant number of our population is living in pain because some of the freedom to dispose of the life once conceived might be restricted here and there.  The left accuses the right of only caring about babies and the right insists that we do not only care about babies while I wonder why it is so wrong to care about babies in the first place?

The lie has become the only truth to be tolerated -- and that lie is that sex was never about love, love was never about marriage, and marriage was never about children.  It was only about the pleasure and desire of the person and not about the intended fruits of it all.  No one should be expected to restrict sex to love or presume love leads to marriage and the fruit of marital love is a child.  That would be a burden too great to bear.  So the job of the world is to make sure people can do what they want, when they want to do it, without ever having to deal with the ordinary consequences of it.  Is it any different to want a cheeseburger that offers no calories or cholesterol or sodium from wanting sex without commitment or consequences.  There was a time in which the appeal of sex was the child but now that same baby has become the poster child for inconvenience, a drag on somebody's style, and a mistake to be corrected.

Abortion drove the nail in the coffin but the box was already full of the stench of death when it became possible to do what makes babies without ever having a second thought about babies being made.  Lest we blame it all on those godless heathen who live detached form the borders of our parish, Christians have been learning to mouth the mystery of the ages in secular terms for so long now that few of us see what is wrong with lightening up on all the pro-life talk to focus on more urgent needs of the Kingdom.  Ouch!!!

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