Having children is an awesome responsibility, and one that should not be taken lightly. It is good we consider this aspect of our lives carefully; after all, this is about an eternal soul coming under our care.
Now, I know we’ve been conditioned to think we have a romantic, hopefully marital, relationship established and then we think about adding children into the picture, but this is not God’s original intent.
Yes, the marital bond is important and is meant as a picture of the Heavenly relationship. However, when God instituted marriage, it was meant to be procreative by definition.
In other words, children are not meant to be an “add on” to a marriage, but one-half of its core. This is not to say a couple cannot experience a close relationship without children, but I do believe it will not be as flourishing as when children are a part of it.
This goes back to the point made in a previous post about the essential connection between sex and procreation. It is perilous to human society to separate the two, because it is out of this separation that all manner of perversions are normalized.
So the time to consider whether having babies is welcome or not is way before the physical relationship begins, because, in the natural, normal scheme of things, we must concede to this maxim:
Sex makes babies.
So, a couple becomes pregnant, and their minds explode. “How are we going to afford this child? Where are we going to even keep this child?” They may live in a studio apartment, or a bedroom in Grandma’s house.
They are having a hard time keeping up with the bills as it is, and now they must add another human being who will need food, shelter and clothing. They can’t conceive how this could be possible.
We are familiar with this scenario because it is common, and people all over the world in all ages have faced these questions over and over again.
I recently listened to the account of a holocaust survivor, Eva Clarke. Her parents were both Jews who were interned in the Terezin Ghetto in what is now the Czech Republic during World War II. During that time the prison officials had separated husbands and wives and prohibited conjugal entanglements, precisely because they were trying to get rid of the Jews, not increase their numbers.
But Eva’s parents found a way, and her mother became pregnant. At that time, becoming pregnant meant instant execution, but this mother was able to live on.
At one point it was obvious the Nazis were losing the war, and so they became desperate. They tried to dispose of all the evidence of their many crimes by murdering all the abused, emaciated prisoners they could. As Eastern Europe was being liberated by the Soviets, they were hastily attempting to move all of their captives back closer to Germany where they were to be executed.
Eva’s mother, advanced in her pregnancy, was forced on one such arduous journey. Without proper water, food, or any other humanitarian care, she arrived at the Mauthausen camp in Austria. She, and some of the other prisoners, were too weak to climb the hill into the prison, so they were put onto carts and carried up the hill.
It was in a coal cart that Eva’s mother, Anka, gave birth. Somehow, a doctor was found. Under his care Eva’s tiny, three-pound body was able to survive, held constantly against Anka’s warm body in lieu of an incubator.
Eva survived and grew up to become a mother herself. This year she will be 80 years old. She spends her time sharing her story and warning people against the attitudes which open the door for atrocities such as genocide.
According to our thinking, this baby never should have been born. If there had been availability, her mother should have had her aborted–we would have considered it merciful in that situation (there are accounts of women who performed abortions in concentration camps during that time). Many other women and their babies perished in a multiple of heinous ways. When Anka was carrying her baby she did not have any idea that the Allies were on the verge of liberating the camps. And yet, she never gave up hope. She forged on, at one point receiving a glass of milk from a farmer along the way (did this make the difference?).
What is the point of all this?
Almost none of us will ever face the dire circumstances of Anka and Eva. Even if we live in a car, our plight is much brighter.
And yet, this baby was precious, this baby was needed. This baby grew up to keep her own mother going in her later years.
We must take into consideration that things are always changing. In Anka’s case she went on to live a good life. She met an old friend after the war and they married. He adopted Eva as his own child and they emigrated to the UK. The family they created together was comforting and healing.
What if Anka had said “no” to having a baby? Then the Nazi’s would have had victory in her life–they would have taken away the evidence of the love she shared with the husband she lost (he was shot in Auschwitz). She and her second husband would have lost the joy of watching her child grow. She would have missed out on the comfort of having a devoted daughter in the waning years of her life.
When we sit in our current circumstances and decide we can’t afford to have a child, we are being small-minded. We are keeping God from fulfilling the intentions He would have had for the human being He had in mind.
We may feel as though we can’t stretch our budget any more before it breaks. Or, we may be living a good life, but having a baby would interrupt our 10-year financial plan.
But none of this matters. God’s ways are not our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He knows the end from the beginning.
That shack we’re living in will someday turn into a home. That home will expand. That 10-year plan will become irrelevant when we open our hearts to receive the blessing of His precious human beings.
Here is a quote cited in Charles Spurgeon‘s Treasury of David on Psalm 127, verse 4:
Children!—might one say as the word was uttered—I left mine in my distant home, in poverty, their wants and numbers increasing, with the means of providing for their comfort daily narrowing. Even should my life be prolonged, they will be children of want, but with sickness and warnings of death upon me, they will soon be helpless and friendless orphans. Yes I but will God be neglectful of his own heritage? will he turn a gift into a sorrow? Poor as thou art, repine not at the number of thy children. Though lions lack thou shalt not, if thou seekest him; and know that it may be even for their sakes that he feedeth thee. If even thou wouldst not part with one of them for thousands of gold and silver, believe that he who is the fountain of all tenderness regards them with yet deeper love, and will make them now, in thy hour of trial, a means of increasing thy dependence on him, and soon thy support and pride.
Children!—might another say, as the Psalm referred to them—on their opening promise the breath of the destroyer has been poured. They are ripening visibly for the grave, and their very smile and caress cause my wounded heart to bleed anew. Yes, mourner; but God’s heritage! may he not claim his own? They are in safe keeping when in his, and will soon be restored to thee in the better land, where death will make them ministering angels at his throne; nay, they will be the first to welcome thee to its glories, to love and worship with thee throughout eternity.
Children! this word to a third, of an even sadder and more anxious spirit, might seem like the planting of a dagger in his heart. His children have forsaken their father’s God. Their associates were the vain and vicious; their pleasures were the pleasures of folly and shame; their lives barren of all promise, their souls destitute of all purpose, and steeled against all reproof. True, but the heritage of the Lord still. Hast thou, sorrowing parent, asked him for wisdom to keep it for him? Have due thought, prayer, watchful and holy living been expended on that heritage of God? No culture, no harvest in the soil; no prayer, no blessing from the soul. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it”, is a promise that though sometimes, yet but seldom has missed fulfilment. Bring them to Jesus, and, unchanged in his tenderness, he will still lay his hands upon them and bless them.—Robert Nisbet.
I can speak to this because my husband and I have survived numerous lean seasons with our own 15 children. Next time I would like to share some of the ways God helped us through it all to give you even more encouragement (and some practical ideas).
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