Lost Down Payment

Her name was Love, this 12-day-old infant, and she was not supposed to be occupying space on the planet.

Baby dedication services during this holiday season included her, Love J’Dore, quiet in her mother’s arms before the congregation.

I introduced the baby, youngest among a dozen dedicated, and prayed for her and her family along with the other children and parents standing before us.

Her family promised that day, a week before Christmas, to teach her the truth of the gospel, and our church promised to help. This is how our church follows the example of Mary and Joseph when they came to the house of worship to present and name their newborn baby, Jesus.

Baby Love’s mother made an appointment and a down payment on an abortion when she learned that she was carrying this child. Brittnay, pregnant for the third time, felt that she could not endure another pregnancy nor care for another baby. She made her way, heavy-hearted, to the clinic in her neighborhood at the designated time for the abortion.

The clinic was closed permanently, she discovered when she arrived. She turned away from the shuttered clinic thinking about these things—and very aware of the tiny life inside her womb. She decided that this was a message from God to her and that this child growing inside her was important and precious. She gave that baby the gift of life, carried her full term, and when the baby was delivered, weighing almost 7 pounds, she named her Love.

I learned these things later, after Baby Love had already been presented to the church and after we all had spoken our vows. This child, at risk of termination before she drew her first breath, remains in my thoughts and prayers. We presented her to the Lord that day of dedication. We promised to help her mother and grandmother.

She made it into the world, Love did, but what will happen now? Will we keep our vows to her? If we keep our promises, maybe she will fulfill the promise she is to us.

Baby Love has been entrusted to us, her family, friends and community. Our responsibilities only began when her mother chose to cherish her rather than abort her. If she is ever to know the full import of her name we will need to nurture her in our playgrounds, schools, and clinics. She must sense a surrounding presence of protective care as she becomes aware of her own being in our world.

Our community is rife with violence in this new year. The cries of bereaved parents and siblings and friends rise up to heaven, and Baby Love lies in a crib in the middle of it all. Only despair and hopelessness compounded by fear and sorrow could bring such wanton slaughter to our streets. Somehow we have forgotten the promise and wonder in every new life.

We push back the darkness when we receive with faith and hope the life that God gives from the first flicker to the last dart on the EEG. The heavy responsibility accepted will be returned with immeasurable joy.

Life is a divine gift. Our own existence—and that of those around us—is a sacred trust. We announce this to our friends and family members each time we receive with joy the inconvenience and expense of a new life. Embrace each human life—the least, the little, and the lowest—and you bless us all.

Our entire community must respond to the hopelessness and despair that fosters the violence. Every single person can do so by reaching out to the frail, the infirm, and the most at-risk among us whether captured in the amniotic fluid or imprisoned by the culture of death.

If we give them love, these least among us, we unleash in them the promise of life. We crush the lie of hopelessness that ignites and feeds the hate.

Love gives its rich blessing and reward. And love makes its perpetual demand. Love cannot sit idly by while others struggle and fall. Love makes a way where there is no way. Love never turns away, never turns aside, never turns hopeless.

Love never fails.

Brittnay spared her baby, named her Love, and took on the expensive assignment of lifelong concern and care for another person on the planet.

Nothing in human experience is better and stronger—and filled with more promise—than this. Among the spectrum of human endeavors and occupations, the greatest is love.