M'kay. So I've been feeling a trifle crummy lately. I like to take walks just about everyday, and today was no exception. So I was just, y'know, walking on my way when I spotted…
her. She was an old lady, at least seventy, with gray hair and wrinkles and the like. She was in a wheelchair. Now, I know that this isn't exactly the
most unusual thing to see a person in; plenty of people are stuck in wheelchairs, and some have been stuck in them for their entire lives. That's just it though.
I reached this nice, steep, steep,
steep hill that I like to go jogging up. I was about to start when my mind turned to the old invalid. Surely she would be unable to enjoy such a jog in her condition. And what about those who have been in a crippled condition for all of their lives. They would
never have such a privileged opportunity as mine. This made me quite distraught, knowing full-well that such a defect could very well have afflicted
me had the circumstances of my formation and birth been different.
As I sat down, I began to wonder about the other things that could plague a person. There are those who will never hear the laughs of children, the conversations of their friends, the beautiful music that we as people have composed. There are those who will never see the beauty of a flower, the smile of a mother, or the moon in the Night's sky. And what of all the other birth defects a person can have. It is estimated that seven babies are born a second. How many of them will be born with the cleft lip? With the blindness? With the gay? With the Down's? With the autism? All these horrible things that have, by the LORD's Grace, missed me, will in turn affect someone else's life.
"Why must these things happen?" I am left to wonder. The LORD allows such terrible things to occur to people from their very birth. Is it our penance for the crimes of our forebears Adam and Eve? Perhaps we deserve it, for perverting our own nature by willing defying God and allowing Sin to enter into the world.
Not something I usually like to think about, because it's pretty sad when you do.