In a truly stomach-turning report, CNN notes that a bag containing the skeletal remains of at least six babies was found on the grounds of a Christian missionary hospital in India. CNN notes that the bones could be from stillborn babies who were not buried properly, or they could be the remains of sex-selection feticides or infanticides.
This is hardly an Indian-specific problem. Would that we could blame such things on a “backward” civilization bereft of “progress” and “Enlightenment.” India is a rapidly industrializing country, a nuclear power with a cultural heritage and a Hollywood commerce that is surpassed only by our own. In the United States of America, the only reason we so rarely find such bones is not because of our moral “progress.” It is instead because our abortuaries have the technical “progress” to grind the babies to more unrecognizable bits. There should be a sadness here. We don’t know the sexes of these babies, and we certainly don’t know their names. There are no birth certificates or death certificates, no identifiable next of kin, no gravestone.
They were never named, and were disposed of with a cruel efficiency.
But Jesus knows their names. And one day He will call them, by name, from a grave and welcome them, not as medical waste, but as beloved sons and daughters. He will also remind a vicious and progressive humanity, one by one, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt 25:40 KJV).
So, then again, I suppose, in one very important respect, we do know the name of each baby found in this bag, and each baby left unfound, in garbage receptacles all over the globe. And the name is Jesus.
