Bear with me here….
It is possible to be a poor parent and never run afoul of the law.
It is also possible to be a decent parent and have to submit to the scrutiny of a caseworker.
But the stories that are the hardest to bear are the ones like Kevasia Edwards.
Little people whose whole lives have been marred by pain, hunger, violence, and the state walks into and then out of their lives only to do nothing.
Until it is too late and they have been murdered.
Today a baby in North Texas is receiving life-sustaining nourishment and medical care in a hospital. She is alive and growing and safe.
Until tomorrow when a judge has decreed that she and her medically fragile mother will be left to die.
The minimum requirement for you to retain your humanity is for you to think for one minute about the actual mechanism of death for that mother and child.
Will they starve?
Suffocate?
Feel pain?
And would you want to face their fate?
I do not have to search the annals of history to know what Hippocrates would say about withholding medical treatment in order to kill.
Our pragmatism has rendered us savages, trading our souls for money.
Mark 8:37
Before I thought these rules were enough:
Let your children know they can talk to you about anything.
Educate them about sex.
Tell them they will never get in trouble for telling the truth.
Tell them if someone tells them a “secret” then tells them they can’t tell their parents that is precisely the secret they should tell as soon as possible.
Never leave them with someone you don’t trust.
If they can talk, they will tell you if something happens…
Now I know these rules were woefully inadequate. Abusers, predators, capitalize on the innocence of children at all cost.
New rule (an addendum): never leave your child alone with someone you do not trust completely.
Narrows the field considerably.
Imagine your daughter was on life support. Imagine she was pregnant with your grandchild. Imagine the story of how she sustained her injuries was unsubstantiated and raised serious questions.
Would you want her to live? Would you pray for a miracle? Would you fight to save your child and your grandchild?
Would you want the law to protect them?
You might. I would. Ms. Machado and NARAL would not.
They want both the mother and unborn child to be denied the chance for life and the crucial protection of the law.
Neither of these patients had DNR orders. There is no written record to suggest Ms. Munoz wanted her life terminated, much less the life of her unborn child. The surviving family insist they are sure Ms. Munoz would want to die.
Her family is fighting to have her life extinguished. The only protection she has is the law of the state of Texas.
No thanks to Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and Wendy Davis.
Tell me one more time why you don’t believe in hell.
And I will say,
well, ask Nixzmary, she lived there.
I don’t enjoy planks, but I do them anyway–because I am middle-aged and I need them.
They are so unpleasant that they always remind me of Jesus on the Cross all those merciless hours.
An eternity, really.
But today I was reminded of Byreon Hunter as well. What I wrote about him before seemed too insignificant to the task of grief for such a sweet little peanut.
His story seems to mirror the story of the victim in the parable of the good Samaritan.
Idolatrous culture, outcast guy, acts suspiciously like the peerless Storyteller.
We forget that to his listeners there was no such thing as a “good” Samaritan.
I personally think he was quite real. Which means so was the brutalized victim.
Make no mistake: no human punishment can ever atone or pay for doing that to a child. Ever.
But Jesus took every blow, every wound, all the pain.
He pays the whole price for our brutal rebellion, knowing we are all Samaritans without him.
To be a good Samaritan? That takes Jesus.
And the planks, those God-forsaken miserable planks…on the cross
For us.
Little Byreon Hunter was an abuse and murder victim before anyone began to look for him.
The details of his abuse, torture, and slow agonizing death are more than any of us want to face.
But face them we must. Humans, parents, bad boyfriends do unspeakable things in our midst.
This is America. And if we don’t like what happened to Byreon Hunter then we must insist that his murderers face the full force of the law.
Knowing, as we do, even that would not be enough.
Have you ever had a friend who you trusted completely? For reasons of time and circumstance you thought–this person has my back.
Or something…
Most of us would like it if God were a glorified Santa Claus, providing winning lottery tickets and easy answers.
He is not. He is “not a tame lion.”. And this is a dark world.
But if you get to know Him well, you learn something–God is completely trustworthy.
Lucky for us His love never fails.
I was in a barn the other day, marveling at the smell. I have given birth to all my babies in temperature and germ-controlled hospitals.
I am not going to lie, I would not want to have a baby in a barn then put him in a feeding trough to sleep.
I love animals, but the whole thing seems so desperate and impoverished.
Surely the Lord of the universe could have given the kid a motel room?!
The birth of Jesus was deeply inconvenient, fraught with the appearance of impropriety, and a life-long exile from paradise for the Baby in the manger.
To many people his life would look like a mistake, but they would be wrong. The birth of this child in the barn was the most important in history.
An event I take quite personally. My life and hope returned, my spiritual debt paid. My life sentence taken by Another.
What would I do without you, Jesus?
What we know is scant:
A little girl plays in the snow
In a trailer park
In Ohio
She goes missing
They look for her
Only to find
Her too late.
Years ago I lived and worked in a community where a little girl was found murdered and discarded in a dumpster.
This seems to be defining: how do we respond to any story of any child murdered and treated like trash?
Do we mourn? Do we demand justice? Do we search for answers?
Or do we distance ourselves from our poverty–moral or tangible, and say,
not my kid, not my problem?
Carrying Light 