The Numbers - Hope in the Loss of a Baby

 

The Numbers

See how impartial death is, and how it spares no rank or degree of men; the highest is not above the reach of its arrows, nor the lowest below its notice. ~ Matthew Henry

I have ministered in and among the military for two decades. For all of the wonderful experiences and memories and friendships, one thing has stood out in a painfully obvious way: miscarriage and infant mortality is still high, even in AD 2026. The military is not more prone to this, but because the military is made up primarily of young people in their family-building season, it is more obvious. God has continually opened this topic to me from his Word and from experience.

In the United States, roughly one out of every one-hundred-eighty babies will not make it to their first year. Worldwide it’s closer to one in forty-one. One in twenty-seven won’t make it to their fifth birthday.

The 2013 photo documentary Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World’s Poor sought to drive home this point,

The biggest challenge is making [these pictures real] so that people understand that there are 18,000 children under the age of five dying every day… ~ Renee C. Byer

This is a marked decline from even seventy years ago, but it is still staggeringly high. If we factor in miscarriages, then one in six women will experience the loss of a child in their lifetime. Husbands, fathers, and others will share in that pain.

While reliable access to clean water and food will drastically improve your odds, if you’ve lost a baby, you know how dangerous childrearing and childhood still is. And you have joined the ranks of some of history’s most famous people.

The palace is as precarious as the poorhouse. Abraham & Mary Todd Lincoln buried Eddie at 3 years old, Willy at 11 and Tad at 18. Thomas Jefferson buried Jane, Lucy, and an unnamed son before their first birthdays. Phillis Wheatley lost two of her infant sons. Queen Anne lost seventeen babies to miscarriage or infant mortality, with only one son surviving until his eleventh birthday. In future chapters we’ll look at King David, King Jeroboam, and the Pharaoh of Exodus.

The mastermind is as mortal as the mediocre. William Shakespeare & Anne Hathaway lost their son at 11 years old. Charles Spurgeon’s parents, John and Eliza, buried more than half of their seventeen children. Eric Clapton’s four-year-old son fell to his death, to which Clapton wrote Tears in Heaven. Horatio Spafford wrote It Is Well With My Soul after his eleven-year-old, nine-year-old, five-year-old, and two-year-old daughters were drowned in a shipwreck; their next born, a four-year-old son, would be buried seven years after the shipwreck.

The faithful is as flawed as the faithless. John Calvin and George Whitefield both lost their firstborn sons. Charles Darwin buried three children and his 10-year-old daughter Annie especially shook his faith and resolve. Martin & Katharina Luther lost a thirteen-year-old and an eight-month-old; the infant especially broke Martin’s heart. Matthew Henry lost four daughters, one of whom shared the name of his first wife who died in childbirth. Jonathan & Sarah Edwards remarkably lost none of their eleven children in infancy, but Jonathan Edwards preached some of his finest and most heartfelt sermons at the gravesides of children from his congregation. William & Dorothy Carey lost three young children in quick succession, ultimately breaking Dorothy’s heart and will to live. Adoniram & Ann Judson buried two children together, then Adoniram buried Ann, and then he buried their daughter six months later. Karl & Jenny Marx buried four young children.

History has proven this to be one of the shared griefs of humanity. No family, no class, no rank, no caste, no people group is immune from it. History is full of women and men who have wailed for their lost children and refused to be comforted.

Even God the Father buried his only begotten Son, but for a completely different reason that we’ll examine throughout later chapters.

As our culture forgets how dangerous childbirth is, we have been separated from much of human history. Renowned Martin Luther scholar, Heiko Oberman, confounded audiences by suggesting that,

The existential existentialism of Luther is hard to grasp.

It means that it is hard—if not impossible—to understand Luther in our day because we are not in imminent danger of black death or the all-too-common fact that someone could go to bed at the peak of health and yet never wake up. We expect all of our children to outlive us, which Luther could not have fathomed.

There is a lot of truth in what Oberman says, but we know all too well that there is still a silent terror that our children may not wake up. I consider myself to be a rational person, but I’m still relieved in the morning when everyone is up and at breakfast; this is not a promise that everyone enjoys and I’ve sat in the hospital with a precious family whose breakfast did not go as expected. Medical and dietary improvements have definitely helped the numbers, but it’s not a perfect science.

What Luther would not understand is the change of terminology in our day. Within the medical profession in recent years, we’re often met with cold sterile environments and cruel terminology. Many parents are not prepared when their miscarriage is labeled a “spontaneous abortion.” This evil language—for that is what it is for whichever reason it was invented—is not indicative of what God is doing in the life of babies who have not been carried to term. The Bible uses the word “miscarriage” (2 Kings 2:21), so if your doctor or nurse hurt you with cruel terminology, know that the Bible does not just use a kinder word; if your baby was not carried to term, you can know that they were carried by angels to the bosom of God.

As we contemplate the death and evil in the world, it’s natural to find ourselves asking who is to blame. The Bible offers far more hope than just assigning guilt, but since it is such a natural question, let’s go there next.