It was a sweltering summer day. After graduating from college, then teaching for a year in a public school, he was finally able to have a block of time to do some long-delayed reading. Sitting in a lawn chair in the back yard and getting some sun, he dug into an introductory book on the Old Testament. Preparing to begin studying theology in several weeks, under the hot sun, he labored over the book a professor had asked him to read before the first day of class.

As the shadows lengthened late that afternoon, his wife drove up, parked in the usual spot, and greeted her husband. After a day of working at an upscale store nearby, she seemed unusually serious. She approached him and asked, “Can we talk for a minute?”

“Of course,” he replied.

“I have something to tell you….” Her voice dropped. “I might be pregnant.”

Silence descended upon them.

“Are you certain?” he inquired.

“Pretty certain, according to my count of the days on my calendar,” she responded.

Again, silence.

All at once, a flood of words burst forth from him. They were said not angrily, but firmly, as a matter of fact: “Well, if you are pregnant, you will just have to take care of it. We have plans. We have been making those plans for a long time. We have to move later this summer. Then graduate school this fall. Now we do not have time for a child. Our lives are too full. You will have to get an abortion.”

That was enough to end the conversation. With a tear in her eye, she turned and entered their apartment.

The two of them uneasily endured the next day or two. It became clear that there was no pregnancy. No baby.

Years came and went. Schooling was completed. Life settled down. They warmed up to welcoming a little one.

After testing positive at home, she visited a doctor’s office to take a more reliable pregnancy test. The next day a nurse called her, informed her that she was pregnant, and asked her if she would like to “terminate the pregnancy.”

“Of course not,” she said in defense of her little one and herself.

ID 113755035 @ Christinlola | Dreamstime.com image edited from original (filter)

Over the next several years, they welcomed five children into their life together. The father and the mother became more and more respectful of human life, especially defenseless human lives — including children in the womb, children whose only defense is their mother’s womb.

How can a young man go from blurting out to his wife “Take care of it!” — translation: “Get an abortion!” — to welcoming five children into his family?

God’s amazing grace. Which works through nature. Which works through marriage. Which works through a faithful wife. Which works through providence. Which works most powerfully through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ — who makes repentance and forgiveness and new creation possible.