Mitchell Landress

This Sunday, January 20, 2008, is sanctity of human life Sunday. And all over our nation preachers will be preaching sermons filled with statistics and graphic descriptions of abortion and the underlying mindset of it all. But I for one, cannot bear the statistics and the descriptions of abortion. I cannot bear it. It may be my weakness to keep my head buried in the sand as it is, but it simply pains me too much to read. The reason, I think, for the pain of it all is the heartache that my wife and I have had over having children. First, in the thirteen months that it took us to conceive our son, thinking that it would never happen. And then, through the pain of our miscarriage last year. The sheer value that I place on babies is much too enormous to even think about someone who would not want a child. But, it would be very easy for me to look at someone who has had an abortion or to look at a doctor who has performed abortions and to say, “How could you?” and refuse to offer grace to ...

I grew up in a car family. We would eat, sleep, and breathe cars; talking about cars at the dinner table, dreaming about cars at night, and literally breathing the dust and paint fumes that constantly flowed from the body shop behind our house. Cars involve a lot of work, but the finished product can be very rewarding. Many cars entered our paint shop as old, dented, and often rusty pieces of junk. But on the day of their completion we would all stand outside the doors of the garage and listen as the car roared to life and slowly backed into the sunshine with fresh paint and shiny chrome glistening off every corner and smooth body surface. I can still close my eyes and smell the newness of the finished product. What I remember most about those days in the body shop was my dad's ability to take what was damaged; worn by weather, owner abuse, and the effects of time - and restore it to its original state. The old became new right before our eyes in miracle like fashion. It is no coin...