Tonight, Canberra’s monuments will be coloured light pink and blue to mark International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Each day in Australia, approximately six unborn babies over 20 weeks gestation pass away. One in four Australian women will face miscarriage or stillbirth at some point. Thinking about losing a baby can make us fear for our future and drag up old sorrows.
We want to remember and honour those who have experienced loss of a son or daughter, and remember and honour those little people who weren’t able to live longer. Perhaps this kind of grief hasn’t entered your life, but if it has, at any point and in any way, I want to acknowledge your loss and grief.
This week the ACT legislative assembly unanimously created a new certificate to help people in their experience of losing a baby in early pregnancy: “Early pregnancy loss is where a child is lost before 20 weeks gestation and is not legally recognised through a birth or death certificate. To help families in the grieving process, from 15 October formal acknowledgement of early pregnancy loss will be available for ACT residents in the form of an Early Pregnancy Loss Commemorative Certificate.”
We could think of this offer from the ACT government as only a certificate, but I pray it for those families who chose to receive one, it will aid in their grief process and help them know that someone really was there and someone really died.
Because of God’s good character and Jesus’ true humanity, those who die in infancy can receive salvation through Christ. They can be caught up in Jesus’ life and so have life forever. An unborn child can be in Christ, that is, an unborn child can be a recipient of the work of Jesus in dying for sin and rising to life.
Jesus’ resurrection means the little children, the really little children, can come to him. Even if they were too young for us to have found out their gender and to name them, God knows them, in Christ.
In the new heavens and new earth, we’ll see many people who have never seen the light of day in this earth, standing and praising Jesus in the light of his glory and grace.
For more resources, head to Sands, Red Nose Day or Heartfelt.
Grace and Peace,
Anna Boxwell