Shelburne faith column: Unborn baby jumps with joy

Although I am officially retired now, during Advent last year, this old preacher somehow managed to calendar three sermons to be delivered during the last two weeks of the holidays. This meant I had to shift my attention from jigsaw puzzles and computer solitaire to sermon study.

I’m not complaining. In fact, it turned out to be a blessing.

Getting ready to sermonize right before Christmas required me to look again (the multihundredth time) at Luke’s early chapters that tell us about the birth of Jesus. And, as so often happens when I read God’s word, in one verse I saw a truth I had overlooked before.

You may remember that Luke in his first chapter tells about the conception of two babies, not just the one we honor at Christmas. The angel Gabriel foretold two exceptional pregnancies: first, Elizabeth’s baby John the Baptist, and then, almost six months later, Mary’s infant the Christ child.

Soon after the angel’s announcement shocked the virgin Mary, she hurried south from Galilee to visit her much-older pregnant cousin. When she got to Elizabeth’s home in Judea, Mary called out some sort of greeting to her. And Elizabeth responded to her in amazement. “When I heard your voice,” she told Mary, “the baby inside me jumped with joy.”

What does this simple verse tell us about babies in the womb? Months before either of them drew a breath, both of these fetuses had identities. Mary’s baby-to-be was still in his first weeks of his mother’s pregnancy. Can we learn anything here about how we should be treating unborn babies today?

After five decades of legalized abortion, some states have outlawed abortion entirely, and others now protect all but a few of the unborn, thus getting our nation closer to the fetal laws that governed us for centuries before Roe v. Wade.

For anybody with a conscience, abortion is an acceptable practice only if they can convince themselves that the fetus they dispose of has no more personal identity than an excised appendix. Dead tissue belongs in the trash. But dead people — even babies — belong in a grave.

Gene Shelburne is pastor emeritus of the Anna Street Church of Christ, 2310 Anna Street, Amarillo, Texas. Contact him at GeneShel@aol.com, or get his books and magazines at www.christianappeal.com. His column has run on the Faith page for almost four decades.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Shelburne faith column: Unborn baby jumps with joy