Baby Dedications

Police arrested a 24-year-old woman from South Carolina on Tuesday, February 8, 2011, and charged her in connection with the discovery of her newborn son in the toilet of the BI-LO Center in Greenville, S.C., according to news sources.

The woman, who already has a 4-year-old child, told police she couldn’t recall what happened after she went into the arena bathroom when she attended a circus on Friday, Feb. 4.

A custodian discovered the infant around 11:30 p.m. The child was only a few hours old; he was suffering from hypothermia and weighed around six pounds. He was rushed to the hospital and was listed in critical condition on Tuesday, Feb. 8. The mother could face 30 years in prison if convicted on one count of felony child abuse and one count of unlawful neglect toward a child.

I heard the news about that baby only days after witnessing a Sunday morning “baby dedication service” at the church my wife and I attend in Southern Pines, N.C. I thought about the contrast in images: 10 held-and-cuddled children standing on a church stage on a Sunday morning versus one newborn shivering while lying in water held by a receptacle manufactured for the disposal of human waste.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1776 in the United States Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal….” Though we all may be in theory “created equal,” some people don’t seem to be born that way.

I remember moving years ago with my wife and our first daughter, a toddler at that time. A man, who appeared to be 20 years older than I and a bit nervous or hyperactive, knocked on the door of our newly purchased home.

“Hello, I’m your neighbor from up the street,” the man said. He told me his name and, after a few more words, said, “I was left in a basket on the doorstep of the Salvation Army when I was a baby.”

I thought it odd that he so quickly offered that information to a stranger. He concluded his welcome by saying, “This is a good neighborhood – don’t nobody bother nobody.”

I wondered how knowing he was left as an infant at the Salvation Army affected the man who stood on our doorstep. Did he spill out the circumstances of his beginnings to defuse any rejection he potentially might feel if his new neighbors heard about his start in life? Did he fear being a “bother” to anyone?

The Prophet Jeremiah said, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations’” (Jeremiah 1:5 NIV).

You may have heard that verse used to comfort people feeling insecure about their self-worth. Have you wondered if “that word” was for Jeremiah but not for you? There seem to be many babies born “without a chance in the world.”

And yet, Jesus said, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29 NIV).

When parents brought youngsters to Jesus so he could “place his hands on them,” his disciples rebuked the parents. “But Jesus called the children to him and said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these’” (Luke 18:15-16 NIV).

You don’t have to be “a Jeremiah” to be important to the Heavenly Father.

At the baby dedication service I mentioned, my wife and I saw our pastor pray for 10 children. An array of young parents stood side-by-side across our church platform. The way those parents held their children and the fact they brought them to be dedicated to the Lord seemed to indicate the value they placed on their little ones.

Every child is important to God, whether that child is red or yellow or black or white, whether he was born in a castle or a shack – or whether he was birthed and left lying in a toilet bowl.

Can Baby Boomers Grow Old with Dignity?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more than 77 million baby boomers in the U.S. By 2030, this group (born between 1946 and 1964) will represent an estimated 20 percent of the U.S. population.

This means more than 10,000 baby boomers will turn 65 every day for the next 19 years, writes Emily Driscoll, reporting for Fox Business News.

What caused the U.S. baby boom folk refer to? American soldiers returned from World War II in 1945 started having kids in 1946.

In a recent “World Magazine” article, D.C. Innes writes, “It’s 2011. Three score and five years ago, our mothers brought forth a new generation, a big generation, a baby boom that has now started entering retirement.”

Innes says about boomers: “Many of them, whether through exercise or Botox, have no intention of ceding to others what they consider rightfully theirs: youth. The baby boomers have been the center of everyone’s attention since they were born, beginning with the publication of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care in 1946.”

A Pew Research study tells us that “the typical Boomer feels nine years younger than his or her chronological age” and thinks old age begins at 72.

“They’ve made it our standard practice to speak of the aged as being so many ‘years young,’” Innes writes.

One reader commenting on D.C. Innes’ article about aging baby boomers writes, “Whaddya mean old age doesn’t start at 72? My father retired at age 62. He started to receive AARP stuff and went nuts. He always told the toll collector ‘Here you go, son,’ but when the guy responded with ‘Thanks, Pop,” he stopped. It was an adjustment. In his 70s, while waiting for my mother to get ready for church, he put his leg up on a kitchen chair (something we were not allowed to do), so I teased him. His comeback? ‘I’m old, I can do what I want.’ Every generation, every person, gets hit in the face with the fact that they are now “Der Alte,’ – ‘the old one.’ I do think it will be difficult for those who are not grounded in faith. They will have to come to terms with a lot of ‘stuff.’It will be my turn this year as one of those 10,000. It is sobering to realize how short it has been and how little there may be left. But I can with only increasing honesty and sincerity say that the confident trust I have in God makes the past, present and future a life of wondrous hope. I would live blindly in foolish cynicism were it not for the realized grace of The Timely God Who daily assures me ‘I Am with you.’ To believe otherwise is to fall prey to the desperate lie of our hopeless enemy.”

Another reader of Innes’ article about aging says, “I learned a long time ago I am nothing, formed from nothing, and yet He who is everything for some reason (love) cares about me, you, all of us nothings on the surface of a dust particle in space. Any worth that my life has is from Him, not from me, you, or this material universe.”

Romans 5:12 reminds us of this fact: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

The Psalmist wrote, “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply (get) a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

I was born in 1947, at the front end of the baby boom generation. I half-joked recently with a friend that I, being a boomer, thought the Lord would return before I became old. Growing up, especially during the 1960s, many of us boomers thought the world revolved around us, so when I learned about the Lord’s promised return, I thought my generation would be “it,” the “chosen ones” who would see Christ’s second coming. (Hey, I still might see it during my lifetime!). I light-heartedly told my friend that I hadn’t saved enough funds for retirement nor taken good care of myself because I’d assumed the Lord was going to return and rescue me from any old-age hardships. My friend laughed. He realized I was commenting on boomers’ tendencies toward self-centeredness.

A prayer for us Baby Boomers: Heavenly Father, deliver us Boomers from ourselves. Help us grow old with humility and dignity. Continue to teach us how to number our days and share your Gospel. Help us abandon the search for the Fountain of Youth and learn to trust You, the “Fount of every blessing.” In Jesus’ name, amen.