Children are akin to potato chips . . . it’s pretty hard to stop at just one. My wife and I wanted a big family. Four kids later, we’ve got a biggish family going, but it could always be bigger.

But, then there’s Providence. As a married couple we participate in the creative act, but we do not control it. It’s the Author of life who controls that switch.

A baby starts out so fragile and improbable . . . the Imago Dei (Image of God) imprinted on a material being no bigger than a single cell! In nine months, the hidden becomes the revealed. Birth is the first opportunity for lover and beloved to embrace. Many a parent however, never experiences this life changing moment due to miscarriage. Many a parent forfeits it voluntarily through abortion.

For the pre-born who were never born, their purpose and existence were not and are not meaningless. On the contrary (and ironically), their humanity and personhood is more real and fulfilled than is ours, the living.

I ran across a story on HotAir.com about a 4 year old who apparently had an out-of-body experience during emergency surgery for a burst appendix. This child was gravely ill and his prognosis for survival was very low. He was medically at death’s door. Immaterially, he passed through it. What he experienced illumines who the pre-born exactly are . . . they are we.

Colton Burpo, after he miraculously survived his emergency surgery, was able to describe to his parents in detail what they were doing while he was being operated upon . . .

OK, so maybe the kid’s a deductive genius and described things his parents normally did (never mind that he also described their location).

But, Colton also described meeting his great grandfather while he was being operated upon. He was not able to pick him out in family pictures, until the Burpo family ran across a picture of the great grandfather as a young man.

OK, so maybe the kid has a good imagination, but then again, the kid described the man’s personality and described interactions between his father and his great grandfather that occurred when his own dad was just a child.

But, here’s the kick in the head . . . the post surgery Colton Burpo approached his mom one day and stated that he has two sisters, and then, point blank told his mother that a baby died in her tummy. The mother was speechless, speechless because it was true. She had miscarried. Colton had a living sister and a dead one. Colton went on to tell his parents how he met his sister in Heaven.

It’s a telling, goose-bump inducing tale of the unmitigated humanity of the unborn. Colton did not meet a product of conception. He met a person. He met his sister. She knew him and now he knows her. Life is short and it’s already later than we think. Colton will be reunited with his heavenly sister someday. Even a long life is but a blink in the expanse of time.

So, to those who mourn a miscarriage or to those who mourn and regret an abortion, you’ve got a heavenly advocate. You know someone close to God . . . a kind of closeness not possible on this side of the veil. It’s your child. Consider him or her a part of your family . . . they are no less human than you . . . in fact, they are more so. And, they already know and love you.

And finally, to a child I hope to meet someday and who we barely knew graced our lives, this message:

Raphael, no less a child
Than those I hold dear in the ramparts against the night
No less my beloved,
No less my precious.
How we would have laughed.
How we would have raced,
Embraced in the verve of two beating hearts.
In Providence, I trust I shall know you . . .
How shall I reach Heaven?
Like a cannonball,
With one among infinite reason,
That we shall meet more dearly,
Lovely Raphael.

Source of story on Colton Burpo: HotAir.com