Perhaps you saw the “Celebrate family, celebrate life!” ad during Super Bowl XLIV, featuring Tim and Pam Tebow. Weeks before its 30 seconds of air time, the ad had caused a wide range of intense emotions! Those “opposed” considered it “offensive and demeaning.” Those “in favor” rejoiced that its message would promote the value of life and family on the world’s largest media stage! What caused such a stir? The simple story of a mother who chose to keep her unborn baby rather than to abort him.
In the 1980s Bob and Pam Tebow had moved to the Philippines with their young family. Months later, Pam became infected with dangerous pathogenic amoebae and slipped into a coma. Strong medications turned her condition around, but while on extended treatment, Pam became pregnant. Knowing the potent drugs could have already killed the embryo, doctors recommended an abortion.
Instead Pam chose to discontinue her treatments in hope of saving her baby’s life. She and Bob asked God for help. The difficult months that followed ended with two final months of bed-rest. Then, on August 14, 1987, a healthy (though somewhat malnourished) baby boy—Timothy Richard Tebow—was safely delivered!
If you’ve ever watched 6’3”, 235-pound Tim Tebow quarterback the University of Florida football team, you know it’s hard to imagine he was ever the outcome of a troubled pregnancy! But what if his mother had chosen to abort him? Would another college sophomore ever be awarded the Heisman Trophy, as Tim was? Would a college quarterback ever set the record for both rushing and passing for 20 touchdowns in a single season? Only Tim has so far.
But even if Tim had never played a down, his story needs to be told in our day of “cheap life” and “disposable pregnancies.” The first babies aborted in 1973, when abortion become legal in the US, would have been 37 in 2010—in the prime of their lives. But we’ll never know what would have become of the 52 million American babies aborted since then. As newspaper sports writer Sally Jenkins says, “Abortion doesn’t just involve serious issues of life, but of potential lives—Heisman trophy winners, scientists, doctors, artists, inventors, Little Leaguers—who would never come to be if their birth mothers had not wrestled with the stakes and chosen to carry those lives to term.”
Pam Tebow had a medical “reason” to abort. But most abortions are for “convenience,” and have nothing to do with medical emergencies. It has been said that we live in a world that knows the cost of everything, but the value of nothing. An average early abortion generally costs $375 to $500, but the amazing, tiny human who is aborted is treated with no more value than the bio-medical waste it’s incinerated with.
Thankfully, God values life. In the Bible the writer David celebrated life this way, “For you [God] formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am…wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-14).
Since God values human life so highly, he wanted us to have meaningful lives. That’s why when God’s Son, Jesus, was here on earth, he said “I came that [those who know me] may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). But God’s creative intent for the first humans was “aborted” by their distrust and rebellion against their Maker (Genesis 3). For that they lost the meaningful lives God had intended. And the behavior that spawned their sin against God has passed down from generation to generation ever since.
That’s why Jesus Christ stepped into human history. He became one of us to fulfill God’s intentions for mankind. Then he offered himself as our sinless substitute, taking the punishment our sins deserved. It was our only way out. Christ “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh” (1 Peter 3:18). Then he came back to life three days later as he had promised—“I lay down my life that I might take it up again” (John 10:17).
By believing God that Jesus’ death is the absolute payment for our debt of sins, we can have forgiveness of our sins and a new life through Christ. “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Romans 5:10). That comes by turning from all other “ways” to God and instead placing your trust completely in Christ’s death for you. To those who do, Christ himself said, “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me [God the Father] has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 6:40).
Human life is worth valuing because it is valuable to God. That makes life worth celebrating! Even better is finding the eternal meaning of life through believing in Jesus Christ. Come to him today for forgiveness and celebrate eternal life!