I'm a fixer by trade. I can't remember a time in my life when I haven't been fixing things. From the time I was a youngster till now, I've only had two jobs where I didn't have to pick up a hand tool and repair something. One of those two jobs was construction work, so even then I had to use tools. Most of my life has revolved around a basic truth; things break. How people react to something breaking speaks volumes about who they are, and their approach to life.
Because my trade is fixing broken things, I make a living off of other peoples...problems. Auto mechanics do the same thing. Actually if you think about it, doctors do the same thing. Very little of medicine is preventative. This amazing biological machine we call a body wears out and needs to be repaired once in a while. Because...things break.
There was a time when if my car broke down, or an appliance stopped working, I would begin looking for some spiritual reason why the tragedy was happening to me. Then I figured out that things break. How I reacted to it was affecting my family. Grow up time!! Instead of flinging things across the room, shouting, and kicking things that were in my way, I learned to simply get out my tool bag and fix it. Simple. No blaming God, no blaming me, no blame period. Things break.
Everything that is made by man has a point where it will break. Metal can only be stressed so much before the molecular bonds begin to break down. Plastics release their molecular bonds becoming either crystalline or liquid again. Woods break down at the cellular level, giving way to one form of decay or another. Things break.
Even our amazing universe is breaking. Galaxies are speeding away from each other in great clusters to the point where someday we may not even be able to see their light. Besides, whether science wants to admit it or not, we're told in the Bible that the heavens would be rolled up like a scroll. It won't be needed. Things break.
I said all of this because I happened upon a tree limb which had fallen during a thunderstorm the night before. In the fork of the limb was a bird nest with only one egg still inside. The rest of the eggs were laying shattered on the ground just outside of the nest. I felt sad as I looked at the hope of life spilled out on the dirt beneath the nest. The limb broke, the eggs broke, things break.
I don't know what kind of bird laid the eggs, and I'm sure that the remaining egg would soon disappear as a meal for...something. Still, it bothered me, because of my love for sparrows. Do they know things break? How do they handle grief? Would they mourn?
Life is an amazing thing, and lately the discussion of when it begins has become a national issue. I tend to be simplistic in my thinking. Life begins at conception. I've held this belief since I could first understand how babies came into this world. Once I figured out that I was the product of a happy moment between two people, I looked at all human life as being special. It was my own moment, influenced by scripture, and knowing how I felt about my own existence.
Why the argument has become about choice is beyond me. The choice is simple, don't play around with reproduction unless you are willing to have life inside you. That is the choice. Yes, I'm aware of rape and incest. These things happen, and they are terrible. If you don't want what was created, then give the child up for adoption so that a couple somewhere who can't have a child, can. Instead of making it easier to abort, why don't we make it easier to adopt? The hoops you have to jump through for adoption don't exist for couples who simply have sex and pop out a baby. Every argument against easy adoption is as empty to me as the arguments for abortion.
