I am overseas watching an 8-year-old demonstrating her piano drills. She has made good progress due to hard work and the motivating hope of one day playing as well as her big sister. I have just learned about her amazing introduction to life and feel a tear well up.
Like most children, she has ability to learn, knows the fear of failure and the excitement of impressing an audience. That this little girl may never have experienced the energy and possibilities of life is poignant to me.
You see, she was abandoned at birth. She was wrapped in a plastic bag and hidden under a pile of rubbish.
A woman who made her livelihood by collecting recyclables using a steel hook to fish through waste fortuitously hooked this bundle. When she saw the blue shape inside the bag, she feared the baby was dead, but on closer inspection saw she was still alive - just. She took the "bundle" home and warmed it on her small radiator and the baby's colour returned.
Realising she could neither afford, nor adequately care for, this newborn, the woman took her to a lady she knew was a Christian. She made the right decision, as this lady not only took in the baby, but raised her as her own, legally adopting her later.
Now this little child shows potential in music, laughs and plays, bothers her big sister and lives a generally happy life. So easily, she may not have been at all. A simple "thrust and pull" of a dirty steel hook opened again the opportunity to live.
Why does a grown man weep at this? I am a Kiwi bloke who is pretty good at hiding emotions, except the ones that make him look right in the eyes of others. Moments like this portray the preciousness of this life we all share. For many, life is a hard and bitter struggle, and at times people are driven to irrational desperation. But there is something about life we will fight to keep hold of.
As a Christian, I obviously believe in God and life beyond this earthly experience. The more I encounter moments like this, where I am reminded of the wonder of life, the more I am grateful that this isn't all there is.
I get to see my share of the negatives of life. I see life lived through pain, disappointment and despair. Everyone touches these, to some degree. Rather than make me doubt, these add to my gratitude for the hope of life without pain and sorrow.
So much in this life does not make sense. For example, what about all the little girls dumped in rubbish heaps that were not found? Personally, I don't have a satisfactory answer. Only the people that put them there can answer, but it raises a good point. People make personal decisions in the midst of their personal situations.
One of the most merciless things we can know is personal regret in hindsight. Everyone makes wrong decisions sometimes. We may be the only one to suffer, but often it affects others for life ... and may even cost them their lives.
Regrets are things that niggle away in our memory, some lasting for a lifetime - or eternity. What a chilling thought to stand before God the creator with an aching regret, having denied Him all our earthly life.
Many readers will have faith in God, while many will say they do not. However, I suspect that if you went back a generation or two, many of your forebears will have proclaimed faith in Jesus Christ. They would tell you that Jesus died for you, so you could live for Him. So what has changed?
If we deny God's existence because it is personally more convenient, leaves me less accountable or because it seems to simplify the hard questions, are we not just like the proverbial ostrich with its head buried in the sand?
You may now point to the proven facts of evolution as to why you have no space for a creator, although evolution of species has not been proved, while being taught throughout this country and inferred as though it has been. Personally, it takes more faith to accept that everything came from nothing by accident, than to believe in the God who creates.
You may be adamant that you would never believe in God, yet you would read this now. Is that just curiosity? Faith may not be as dead as you think. Like that little baby under a pile of rubbish, what would it take to pluck you from the darkness and bring you into the light of life? Perhaps just a little nudge.
- Mark Buckle is pastor of Fernhill Church on Stafford.
