When my wife and I announced that we were pregnant, we immediately had to field dozens of messages, texts, calls, and conversations about whether we were hoping for a girl or a boy.
We typically gave the safe, boring, fence-riding answer that was certainly true, but definitely didn’t return the enthusiasm with which the question was asked.
“We’ll be happy either way – as long as the baby is healthy, that’s what matters.”
To which most everyone had the same reply,
“Oh yes, so true! A healthy baby is what’s most important!”
This sort of polite small talk is not my favorite thing in the first place, much less in situations like this when I find myself saying things that I don’t altogether agree with – it just sounded nice and was a quick way to move on to the next subject.
Asking this question of hoping to have a boy or a girl is as fruitless of a question as it gets.
What do you hope to gain by asking this question? How does this help anyone? Plus, there’s nothing we can do turn the odds in our gender favor here anyway…
Again, polite small talk is not my favorite thing, so I’m a bit miffed when talking about polite small talk haha!
Anyway, this question really got me thinking in recent months – actually, it was our answer that really got me thinking, and brought up the most uncomfortable questions:
What if the baby wasn’t healthy? What then?
…
?
And the rabbit hole went deeper still.
How would we have felt if the baby was acutely or chronically ill, right from birth? Would our faith in God have wavered, or even failed? Would we have immediately forgotten that the purpose of having a baby was to glorify God, and instead turned it all about us and our awful circumstances?
If you’re a parent, you might be able to level with this sort of thinking.
If you’re not a parent, you might be wondering why this is relevant.
Here it is:
During this season of quarantine and social distancing, we are surrounded by sickness. It’s our responsibility to be aware and to be prudent, but we must take care to not place our hope entirely in our health.
Because what happens when your health fails you? What then?
Depending on what country you live in, there’s a good chance that you already know or will know someone who has become ill with COVID-19. Even while exercising awareness and prudence, you yourself are not immune to contracting this virus either. This is the nature of a pandemic.
Hope and health collide when we misplace the former by attaching it to the latter. Our hope must be placed in something greater than our health, in something that will not and cannot fail us.
This immediately eliminates two of the most popular sources of strength that the great an powerful Internet would suggest: we turn to our own strength, and we turn to “the Universe.”
We, as humans, clearly don’t have the strength to contain this virus, much less to determine our own health and life expectancy. We can talk about risk management, but we cannot guarantee risk immunity.
“The Universe” is an even more dangerous source from which to expect strength. This sort of thinking often removes us from our responsibilities entirely, and places our hope in a non-cognizant, non-loving, and entirely nonexistent “force” that may simple be ignorance labeled as “bliss.”
Rather, we live under a God who knows, loves, and fights for us.
He will provide for and take care of us – and his provision and care may not always be in the form of great health. He often gives gifts greater than physical health, and sometimes we don’t choose to unwrap them until our physical health begins to fail. We bring this dilemma on ourselves.
Once we reach the other side of this season of global isolation, it may be tempting to place our hope back in our health once again – yet we will all inevitably pass away at one point or another. Our health will still not be a source of sustainable hope.
Eternal hope is the only hope!
If there is a takeaway from this article, it would be a challenge to take inventory of your own hope.
– In what do you place your hope?
– While sickness persists, how are you prioritizing your health?
– What are some disciplines/habits you can put in place to prioritize your health without worshiping it?