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The recent global Wave of Light event was a powerful reminder about the value of unborn babies. But does a life only have value when we decide it does?

Last week, 7NEWS Adelaide published a Facebook post promoting the Global Wave of Light, in which South Australians took a moment to remember those “impacted by pregnancy and infant loss”.

Held on the 15th of October by The Red Tree Foundation, the event involved the act of lighting a candle as a simple way to join a global movement of people healing from the loss of a life through miscarriage or stillbirth.

Major landmarks throughout Adelaide were also lit, recognising the grieving hearts of so many.

We don’t have to ask too many people before discovering someone who has experienced such heartache. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, “Every day in Australia, 6 babies are stillborn and 2 die within 28 days of birth (neonatal death).”

My thoughts and prayers go out to all those grieving such a tragic loss — not just of a preterm baby, but of a life, a person, with all the hopes and dreams for that child’s future.

Glaring Double Standards

It is heartening to read about the human worth of a preterm infant, so credit to 7NEWS Adelaide for a worthy post, and to The Red Tree Foundation for a great initiative.

However, something is amiss. It seems we only remember a baby’s human worth when it is convenient.

Is a baby only recognised as valuable, and a life worth preserving, when the adults responsible for their conception desire them?

If so, this is a novel measurement — to decide whether a life is worth living based on the value other people assign to them.

In reality, the worth of a life is found in the value the Creator of the universe places on us, who made us in His image.

It seems we have a double standard at work in our society. We simultaneously recognise the loss of some preborn lives, while at the same time murdering others under the delusion that “it’s not really a life”.

So which one is it, Australia?

God is Desperate to Forgive You

We all carry guilt and shame. It started with Adam and Eve hiding in the garden of Eden after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Their first response was to hide in fear and shame. So is ours.

It’s a convenient argument to say that cells at conception are not human life. However, logic, science and the moral conscience we all have from being made in God’s image tells us otherwise.

For all of us holding onto a guilty conscience, we have a God bursting in desperation to share His forgiveness with you.

When God went searching for Adam and Eve, he cried out, “Where are you?”

Despite their wrongs, He loved Adam and Eve. While Adam and Eve tried to sew fig leaves together to hide their newfound shame, God sacrificed an animal, and offered the animal skin to hide their nakedness.

We also hide from God in shame and fear over the wrong thing we have done. We’ve all tried to hide ourselves from God with our own meagre fig leaves.

But God didn’t just sacrifice an animal for us. He gave his Son, Jesus, as the sacrifice. Our guilt and shame are now covered by Christ.

How often we hide from God in fear of his judgement. In fact, once we come to Him, we receive love and mercy.

For all those reading this who have played a part in abortion, or been tempted in a dire circumstance, there is a God of forgiveness, eager to remove our guilt and shame, no matter how bad our mistakes.

As the author Philip Yancey has written, “When I finally approach God, in fear and trembling, I find not a tyrant but a lover.”

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.