A doctor is performing what will become one of the most riveting surgeries of modern history. He's in surgery at Nashville‘s Vanderbilt University Medical Center. It's August 19, 1999. The surgery that's about to enter history is unique in and of itself: the doctor is operating from an opened womb on Samuel Armas, an unborn baby. If the doctor fails, both the mother and the baby are likely to die.
It is a revolutionary surgery: the doctor will remove the uterus from
the mother, open it, perform the surgery on the baby, and return the child to the womb.The diagnostician has recommended an abortion; the mother has steadfastly refused.
But it's not the skill of the doctor nor the drama of the surgery alone that will make this operation the historic one it will become. What will make it famous is the drama that occurred while the surgery was in progress.
As the surgery continues, the yet to be born child reaches out of the uterus and grasps the doctor's finger with his tiny hand. It becomes an iconic moment for the ages because it shows the earliest human interaction ever recorded. (Michael Clancy took the picture of the baby's hand grasping the doctor's finger.)
HOUSE
Later, that famous moment will be recreated on television on a program called "House." The series gets its name from the brilliant but drug addicted and nihilistic Dr. Gregory House. He's sardonic, jaded and cynical, not necessarily the physician you're looking for if you're in the market for a good bedside manner.
In the re-enactment for television, when the baby grasps the finger of Dr. House, the normally unemotional surgeon who recommended abortion in the first place, stands transfixed; he's looking at the human nature of the unborn.
TODAY
Samuel Armas is now 17; he lives in Villa Rica, Georgia. Once Clancy snapped that photo, the photographer who was all for abortion wasn't any longer.
THE POWER UNLEASHED
What a story that is! And that's the point--the power of story. Pro-life advocates have rightly advanced their position by argumentation, reams and reams of it. Debate after debate, demonstration after demonstration, book after book have streamed forth from the pro-life position.
I wonder how many mothers-to-be the pro-life books and debates have convinced. I hope a lot. And then I wonder how many the story of that tiny hand reaching out from the womb has convinced. We have no way of knowing, but that story is indeed a powerful one.
And that's the way it is with the Bible which is the story of God's becoming man in a stable in Bethlehem, born into the human race to seek and to save those who are lost. It's a story told and re-told which never loses its power. It's a story so powerful that the human race around the world celebrates it, even though most don't really understand what they're celebrating.
The Christmas story is so powerful that the mighty forces arrayed against it with their lawsuits, lawyers, and judges have yet to shut it down, even though every year, they get an "A" for effort. It's like they're trying to keep a beach ball underwater; the story keeps bobbing back to the surface every year, year upon year, world without end. Amen.
Churches reenact the story in elaborate and admittedly, sometimes in all too costly settings and detail, movies portray it, and television depicts it. The creche decorates yard after yard across the land. Families gather on Christmas Eve to re-read Luke's story. For 2,000 years no group, no government has stopped the story.
There's power in that story!
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