09 Where on Earth is Heaven - Finally Home Series (MP3)

Listen to a Sample

I keep a framed x-ray in my closet. Not to hide it, but to see it. Odd, I know. Other people hang calendars and favorite quotes. I do have a photo of my daughters. But I also have a framed x-ray.

Here's why: the picture is an axial (top to bottom) view of a decimated hip. A jarring car crash left it broken in two places. Doctors who studied the x-ray feared for her life. Even more so, they feared for the life of her child. An unborn, seven-month old infant occupies center stage of the x-ray. He floats amidst the fracture, blissfully unaware of the breakage around him.

A doctor friend who gave me the image remembers the night he saw it in the emergency room. "We wondered," he said, "Can both mother and child survive? If not, Do we take the mother and lose the child? Lose the mother and save the child?" They never had to make the choice. The mother lived, the baby was delivered and my friend kept the x-ray as a reminder: God delivers life through brokenness.