What Love is This?

In Respectable Sins, Jerry Bridges says, "The good news that God no longer counts my sin against me...is so radical, so contrary to our normal way of thinking that, frankly, it seems to good to be true." Often, evidences of grace and of love are so powerful that they do not make sense to our minds right away.

I was blown away by an article that I came across recently. It told the story of a man named Samuel Forrest who lives in Armenia. As he was in the hospital anxiously awaiting the birth of his son, he received unexpected news from the doctors. His newborn son Leo was born with Down syndrome. Forrest, from New Zealand, was entirely unaware of hospital practices in Armenia that say that if your child is born with a condition such as Down syndrome, the parents are not required to keep the child.

Unknown to Forrest at the time, his wife had already decided that she had no desire to keep the child. She then presented him with an ultimatum:

If you decide to keep this child, I am divorcing you.

I cannot imagine the confusion and pain that must have ran through his head. The woman he loved forcing him to choose between his own newborn and herself. I wonder how many times he questioned whether there truly was a right answer.

Yet Forrest claims that from the beginning, there was never any doubt in his mind as to his course of action: he was keeping Leo, his son. He could not allow him to be killed simply because of the condition of his birth. Forrest said, "As a child with Down Syndrome, that becomes somewhat of a label. If we can get around this label, we'll see that they're normal...They all have niches and I want to work hard to find out where Leo's special. This little guy is great."

One week later, his wife filed for divorce.

I see this as a truly remarkable act of love by Forrest. He chose the life of someone who as of now, is incapable of returning that love. While he may have always known what he would do, it would be foolish to assume that it was a painless decision. He was willing to lay down all that he knew for the life of his son.

As John 15:13 says, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." Forrest was willing to lay down the life that he had known so as to allow his son Leo to know a life of his own.

Today, can we say that we are willing to lay down the desires and dreams that we have been chasing for so long as to give hope and life to someone who society would tell us is "lesser" than ourselves? Can we set ourselves to the side to work for what will make the lives of those around us better?


https://gma.yahoo.com/dad-refuses-newborn-son-down-syndrome-221817795--abc-news-parenting.html?soc_src=copy