The LORD bless you and keep you! The LORD let his face shine upon you and be gracious to you! The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!
Today—and every January 22 on the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, the Church asks all of us to pray for the legal protection of Unborn Children. And the Scripture for today gives us two very familiar Scripture images to help us reflect upon this request for prayer. The first one is David and his defeat of Goliath (1 Samuel 17:32-33, 37, 40-51). The second one is Jesus curing a person on the Sabbath while the Pharisees looked on (Mark 3:1-6). Both of these accounts from the Scriptures are worthy of our meditation and reflection. Prayer, after all, is what allows us to come close to God and helps us to experience the grace we need to live a life worthy of our calling as disciples of Jesus, children of God.
There are so many examples of the “David versus Goliath” story that we apply to everyday life. It’s the story of the inexperienced young person going up against the giant and seasoned warrior. It is the story of God’s chosen one from a small country village going against the destructive rule of gigantic power. We love this story! We may love it so well that we may forget its underlying truth as found in verses 37 and 39 of the reading: that God would be with David and David did not take the sword with him, the instrument of war. If God is with us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31) Too many times we rely on our own resources to overcome evils that surround us.
And the Gospel account builds upon this important instruction found in the first reading. It tells us how Jesus gave life, restored life and valued life over any human norm. We know that we do the good when new life emerges and healing takes place, regardless of the time and place. So, today especially, let’s take a good look at how we value life and how we restore life, especially by how we live it and in what we say and do.
One of the surest ways that we can protect the Unborn Children is by creating a culture of justice and peace in our world; in other words, by creating a culture of life. For the vast majority of us, it is about being respectful of life and cultures and customs. It is about saying no to destructive instruments and behaviors. It’s about not hating. It’s about not ignoring the person on the street hoping for some help. It’s about not separating families at the border. It could be as simple as the age-old situation of helping a little old lady to cross the street. Every time we do something that dehumanizes another human being, young or old, we are failing to protect Unborn Children. This day is about doing something positive to bring about new life. And there’s no better way to begin than with prayer.
There is an old saying that goes this way: “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Let’s bring light and life and love into the world around us. Let’s all pray for all that is yet to be born within us.
Years ago, my brother Bill forwarded this story to me via e-mail. It seems appropriate to share it today. It is a true story, according to a google search of the internet.
The smell of rain
A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery. Her husband David held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.
That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver couple's new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs.
'I don't think she's going to make it,' he said, as kindly as he could. 'There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one'
Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Dana would likely face if she survived.
She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on. 'No! No!' was all Diana could say.
She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.
But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Dana 's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw', the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.
There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there.
At last, when Dana turned two months old. her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time.
And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Dana went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted.
Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more. But that happy ending is far from the end of her story.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Dana was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ballpark where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing.
As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby, when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, 'Do you smell that?'
Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, 'Yes, it smells like rain.'
Dana closed her eyes and again asked, 'Do you smell that?'
Once again, her mother replied, 'Yes, I think we're about to get wet. It smells like rain.'
Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, 'No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest.'
Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along.
During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.
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