Babies and Christmas, continued

My goodness. I was surfing a variety of websites that I had seen but not visited this evening (taking a breather from wrapping gifts), and I came across this wonderful quote from Amy Welborn:

Back to our key questions. God took human form; and he took it not simply as a baby, but as the tiniest of all human beings, a mere biological speck, so small and so undeveloped that it could be mistaken for a laboratory artifact, a research specimen, an object for human experimentation. But this speck was God; this complete genetic human organism, in its primitive and undeveloped form, was so much "one of us" as to bear the existence of the Creator. He dignified humanity by taking the form of this creature he had made in his image; and he did it at the most inauspicious and feeble point in the human life story. At the heart of the Christmas celebration lies the fact of all facts, that God became a zygote.

Breathtaking, really. There in all its simplicity is why abortion is a grave evil, along with embryonic stem cell research. God's presence in the simplest, earliest and most elemental human form sanctified it forever.

I personally believe that each human being's life would be sacred without Christ ever having taken human form. (And thus believe that every human being who lived before Christ was sacred.) And there are plenty of non-religious, scientific, legal, philosophical and utterly secular reasons why destroying humans at any time before they are born is deeply and profoundly wrong.

But on this, the eve of Christ's birth, His existence is the only reason that need be mentioned. My prayer for Christmas this year is greater love for our children, and recognition of the Divine in each and every single one of them.