Gains and Losses

Once there was a girl who prayed a prayer that altered my perspective in such a significant way that I’ve never forgotten it.

She was a girl who had walked through the experience of being pregnant with a baby and choosing to give that baby a home that was better than what she could offer. . . . a heartwrenching decision, a decision that is never left behind, but fingers its way forever into the present as the years go by and the birthdays pass.

I can’t pretend to understand the reality of that experience. I can’t wrap my mind around making a decision that heavy with consequences. But she had and she spoke to God out of that reality when she prayed the prayer. She said one night, ever so simply, “God, I know how hard it was for me to give my baby to someone else, even when I was convinced that it was a good home and that she would be loved and treated well. How hard it must have been for you to give up your Son, knowing full well what they would do to Him.”

I felt stunned. I felt sad. I felt the weight, or rather, a shadow of a shadow of the weight that must have fallen on the ever vulnerable, ever tender, never hardened heart of the Father God as He released his Son into the world of men.

Thousands of mothers have chosen for their babies what was closer to perfection than they could offer—have chosen the better over the worse. They've done so because they believed that the gain was greater than the loss.

God chose to send His Son out of perfection into the fallen. Away from the better into the worse. He also believed that the gain was greater than the loss.

And all He had to gain was you and me.