“For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.” Romans 8:22-25

On the way to work this morning, I caught the moon going down. It slipped quietly down through the clouds, a pale peachy color. I thought of our world today and how it just seems that each new tragedy tops the one before. It’s been going that way awhile now. Looking at that moon, I thought, how can there still be so much beauty in such a broken world?

I felt for God believe it or not. I often think of how the world was when He first called it into existence and how perfect it all was. I can almost see it, feel it. It’s a train wreck down here. A bad man pays to have a gentle giant of a lion butchered for what? Cecil didn’t belong to him, I feel like he belonged to all of us. He didn’t deserve that. That would have never happened in Eden.

Added to all this there’s the whole nightmare with Planned Parenthood and the unconscionable acts that go along with it, and our own Government refusing to investigate. There are people all over the world being beheaded right and left. There is war on every front, and the terrible Iran Nuclear deal to top it off.  A little girl goes out on her scooter and never returns home. I was just in her town earlier this year.

It’s just too much.  It’s just too all-encompassing. Which is why I think we so wholeheartedly jumped on the bandwagon to impune that Dentist, who is now nowhere to be found with good reason. He was such an easy mark. It was such a terrible senseless thing for him to do and now the arrow that pierced poor Cecil has gone all around the world.

I was thinking on the way to work that history has really taught us nothing. I was thinking of how the Nazi’s treated their dogs to wonderful dinners while marching Jews out of their homes into the cold, babies and children and old men and women. They treated them as less than human. All these years later, many of us have gone to the museums and seen the ovens and the trains.

We have tsk-tsked and shaken our heads sadly and said that it will never happen again, and yet right here in America for many years, we have rewarded and paid into an organization whose founder has valued some of Hitler’s very own ideals. Here’s a sample of what Margaret Sanger thought and believed:

The purpose in promoting birth control was “to create a race of thoroughbreds,” Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 (p. 2)

More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief aim of birth control.” Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12 

“The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race

Sanger believed that, for the purpose of racial “purification,” couples should be rewarded who chose sterilization. The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David Kennedy, p. 117, quoting a 1923 Sanger speech. 

What a society sows, it will reap. And this is where we’ve come. If a baby comes at the wrong time or is not convenient, or doesn’t fit in with our plans, or if it’s not perfect,  it is perfectly acceptable to kill it, even while it’s blissfully tucked away. But God sees it.

It’s the same kind of crazy psychology that allowed a sophisticated society like Germany to go along with an evil it slowly came to see as normal.

I wonder what God thinks. I think He cries,  personally. I think He weeps. I think He remembers how it all started out and how He created it perfect. Not one drop of blood was shed until we decided we knew what was best. I think He wept as He killed the animal that made the clothes that Adam and Eve wrapped around themselves as they left the gates of Eden.

I think He wanted them to know that with sin always comes death, heartache and sacrifice. But He also wanted them to know there was a way back home, and that Way came with the blood of His very own Son. God in the flesh.

There is so much beauty still in the world, sometimes I wonder how there can be. And yet, everywhere I look there are traces of Eden. And hope.

There is a way home. God holds out forgiveness as a gift to all of us who accept it. There is forgiveness for you if you have had an abortion. There is forgiveness still if you see nothing wrong with it. There is forgiveness for Dr. Walter Palmer, the dentist who killed Cecil.

And while all of Creation groans, we know it’s only temporary…….just this side of eternity, a new Earth is waiting to be born.

RIP and run free Cecil……..

And the wolf will dwell with the lamb,
And the leopard will lie down with the young goat,
And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
And a little boy will lead them.
Also the cow and the bear will graze,
Their young will lie down together,
And the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra,
And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain,
For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
As the waters cover the sea. Isaiah 11:6-9