Ashes
This morning as I stepped outside to take pictures of my children on their first day back to school, I noticed a shower, or really a sprinkling, of ash coming from the sky and lightly covering everything it touched below.
Apparently the ash is from a forest fire blazing many miles east of our home. I have never seen ash fall before, and as I watched it floating down from the sky I couldn’t help but remember the countless stories I have read, and movies that I have seen about the Holocaust. The neighboring towns from the concentration camps must have experienced this ash falling from the sky day after day, except unlike the ash falling on our own neighborhood, which was filled with God’s beautiful nature, it carried down the remains of God’s most wonderful creation; human life.
Now perhaps I have read too many books on the subject of the extermination of 6 million Jews, and countless others during the Holocaust. It is a subject that has interested me since my youth. It both horrified me and fascinated me at the same time that humans could target a particular group of people for extermination based on their judgement of that group's worthiness to live. Not just the Jews, but any other form of human life that was determined to be a drain on those considered to be more exceptional.
As I watched the ash come down my thoughts suddenly veered to something more relevant to current human life, and our own society’s holocaust. Not only our country’s, but our world’s resolution to remove a beautiful group of human life, a beautiful creation (not a mistake!) of God’s; those who are found through testing in the womb to carry the extra chromosome that means they will be born with Down syndrome. Because of fear, because of a “me first” society, entire countries boast that they have basically succeeded in removing these children, these people, from their populations.
As I look at my own two precious adopted girls with Down syndrome, I am incredulous that anyone could find their beautiful, joy-filled lives unworthy of existence. I am heartbroken for all of the families that would have been blessed by the lives of their own children with Down syndrome that never got to meet them. I am sad for all of the families lined up and willing to adopt a child in our country that must wait and wait because their birth families decided that no one would want them, or that it would be more merciful to let them die than live.
This is harsh. I know it is. But someday we may look back in shame at our own form of ashes, our own mass graves of little lives that never got the chance to live, and bless and be blessed by a family.
Now perhaps I have read too many books on the subject of the extermination of 6 million Jews, and countless others during the Holocaust. It is a subject that has interested me since my youth. It both horrified me and fascinated me at the same time that humans could target a particular group of people for extermination based on their judgement of that group's worthiness to live. Not just the Jews, but any other form of human life that was determined to be a drain on those considered to be more exceptional.
As I watched the ash come down my thoughts suddenly veered to something more relevant to current human life, and our own society’s holocaust. Not only our country’s, but our world’s resolution to remove a beautiful group of human life, a beautiful creation (not a mistake!) of God’s; those who are found through testing in the womb to carry the extra chromosome that means they will be born with Down syndrome. Because of fear, because of a “me first” society, entire countries boast that they have basically succeeded in removing these children, these people, from their populations.
As I look at my own two precious adopted girls with Down syndrome, I am incredulous that anyone could find their beautiful, joy-filled lives unworthy of existence. I am heartbroken for all of the families that would have been blessed by the lives of their own children with Down syndrome that never got to meet them. I am sad for all of the families lined up and willing to adopt a child in our country that must wait and wait because their birth families decided that no one would want them, or that it would be more merciful to let them die than live.
This is harsh. I know it is. But someday we may look back in shame at our own form of ashes, our own mass graves of little lives that never got the chance to live, and bless and be blessed by a family.
Well said!
ReplyDeleteChildren who have Down Syndrome are special and sweet; I love their almond eyes, their sweet smiles, and their childlike faith. The fact that people are killing them because they don't want them is unbelievable and inexcusable. If only people knew how cruel it is to kill these precious little ones just because they are different and if people could understand that doctors are so very often wrong...usually the unborn baby doesn't even have Down Syndrome. All children have the right to live.
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