Abortion

Have You Not Read

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Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the

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Saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

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Thank you. I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are Michael Durham, David Kazin, and Andrew Hudson.

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Well, we're gonna start today out with what are we thankful for? What are you thankful for, Michael? I am thankful that the

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Supreme Court of the United States has overturned Roe v.

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Wade. Can we all say amen to that? Amen. All right, and we have a little bit of content that has come out recently that David's captured for us that we can go through and see if we can punch holes through it because it's a response to a biblical understanding of how we should, or a biblical understanding of how we should understand

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Roe v. Wade. Sure, so throughout social media they have referenced

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Exodus chapter 21 as a...

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Justification? Yeah. Proof text? Proof text. Justification for abortion, especially for people who are religious leaders.

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And what I wanted to present was reading the text in its, you know, actually as we have it.

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And then I wanted to cite what somebody else had, you know, put online and we can discuss, you know, proper translation and then, you know, biblical authority.

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So what we have here is Exodus 21 and I'll start in verse 20.

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When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged.

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But if the slave survives a day or two, he shall not be avenged, for the slave is his money. When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine.

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But if there is harm, then you shall pay. Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

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And we have another translation of this passage that is, you can see the, you know, see the differences.

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We have two people fighting. One accidentally pushes someone who is pregnant, causing a miscarriage. The text outlines the consequences.

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If a miscarriage happens, the harmdoer is obligated to pay financial damages. If however, the pregnant person dies, the case is treated as manslaughter.

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The meaning is clear. The fetus is regarded as potential life rather than actual life. Who's that coming from?

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That is coming from Rabbi Samantha Frank. She is a rabbinic fellow,

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Temple Micah in Washington DC, and she was citing the analysis from Rabbi Dania Rutberg, published in The Atlantic, who is also the

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National Council of Jewish Women. Could we hear, Andrew, do you have the translation that this rabbi was working with?

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Yeah, the Jewish Publications Society produces a, probably, I would call a fairly authoritative version for the

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Hebrew -English Tanakh. So starting in verse 20, when a slave -owning party strikes a slave, male or female, with a rod, who dies there, and then this must be avenged.

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But if the victim survives a day or two, this is not to be avenged, since the one is the other's property.

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When two or more parties fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman, and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined, according as the woman's husband may exact, the payment to be based on reckoning.

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But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

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Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and read my translation to King James, the pertinent verse, and I'm, we're doing this because we want our hearers to detect the differences in the translation.

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Verse 22, it says, If men fight and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman's husband imposes on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine.

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But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

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So I think that we are hearing that there is a different translation given the pertinent verse.

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It's not about necessarily the outcome as far as life for life, eye for eye, that's all the same, but in verse 22 the question is, what happens when there's a fight and a woman suffers violence and then she gives birth?

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And New King James says give birth prematurely, the JPS says miscarriage.

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Now those are two very different things, and so then the question is, what's actually there in the original language?

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And then, is there any warrant to read that given the context and the flow of argument that Moses has here, to read that as miscarriage versus birth before the the appointed time?

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The choice of words here is incredibly important. When you see, if you put it in,

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I just read the ESV, so that the child comes out prematurely, New King James comes out prematurely versus miscarriage, it's like, well, what's really the difference?

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Why would anybody be citing this passage to say that, hey, this is why we have justification for abortion?

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Why does this passage, and it is only here, why is this one cited? Well, they're drawing a distinction between the unborn child and the life of the mother, saying that the life of the mother is valuable and that the life of the unborn child is just property or part of the woman's body.

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So when we look at this passage, or this passage is quoted, you know, quoted to you, read it in its context, read it in its entirety, but I think what we're seeing here is one, it's a little bit of, you know, slight of hand with some of the words, but in this ancient context, when someone's child is lost, which happens all the time, it happened all the time, the infant mortality rate was very high, how do we as Christians, reading this text, respond to someone who says, see, just property, just part of a woman's body, this is not a unique human life that deserves protection.

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Using this passage, keeping it in context with the rest of Exodus, how would Christians, should

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Christians respond to someone who throws this in their face and says, you can have an abortion because it is just property, and that's our tradition.

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Yeah, I'd like to maybe work at this, you know, from two different angles.

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One would just be by being very surprised,

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I think we should be very surprised, that that would be the right, both translation and interpretation of this verse, given everything else we read in the

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Bible, like that would be amazingly contradicting to everything else that we read in the

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Bible. So if we read the passage according to the translation of the

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JPS, and we look at that and we say, okay, so a miscarriage is not this forced miscarriage because of this violence, whether they intended it to or not, there's no, there's no life for life, but I think it actually says that in the text, but there's a confusing translation going on here.

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Given everything else we read in the Bible, this doesn't make sense about the way that God values life. I mean, this doesn't really fit.

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And then when you actually go and read the Hebrew words for yourself, and my goodness, you can you can go look at these terms for yourself with any number of free study tools, you discover that it's a noun and a verb.

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The noun is child, and the verb is come out. Now when children come out of the womb, this doesn't mean miscarriage.

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Now there could be indeed a very sad thing, where a child comes out of the womb and dies, and we would call that a stillbirth, or we would call it a miscarriage if the baby died inside the womb.

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However, a child coming out of a mother's womb, if you give that noun and that verb the translation miscarriage,

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I would say the only miscarriage here is your translation work. You have totally failed in giving the proper sense of these terms.

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You are importing something into the text, even, okay, strangling the text, not allowing the text to speak for itself.

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Would you say this is one of the dangers of a dynamic, instead of a formal equivalence, interpretation into the

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English? Yes, I do, because in this case it's a bad translation, not only because of the impact that it has, that is being the attempt to use this for some sort of justification for abortion, which is also nonsensical, but when you read the whole text, it says, now if you just take it as it is, so that the violence happens, and so that the child comes out of the woman's womb, and it says, but no other harm occurs.

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There's harm because the woman was injured, there's harm because she gave birth before she was supposed to, but if no other harm occurs, that's when the fine comes into play.

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However, the very next verse says, but if there was harm, given that the child came out because of the violence, and there was harm, life for life.

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So if that baby does die, the one who caused the violence to the woman, he dies.

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That's what the text says in the most plainest reading of the original languages, without any stress or straining in the reading.

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So I think that that's, you know, when you read this bad translation in the JPS, and you reflect upon everything else we know about God values life in the

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Bible, you say, yeah, that's a really weird translation. And then you go look at the original languages, and even if you haven't taken any

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Hebrew or whatever, all you got to do is just use the tools and go look at the most common way that these words are translated, and then you say, okay, now this is making better sense, and what does it ever make better sense?

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Not only in the immediate context, but in the biblical context. Don't we have an earlier indicator that this is not a good translation, though, other than just that,

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I mean, they use the terms party, or slave -owning party, when the correct term is man, right?

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Like, so we already have, before we even get to the real meat of the argument, we already have a reason to not take these people seriously.

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And if I'm, like, to the question of how do we respond to this, it's not to be taken seriously, because they're not using a serious translation, and they're not serious people.

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It's a far cry from some of the scribes who knew how many words were in each book of the

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Bible, and how many letters were on every line, and had everything memorized, were so very, very careful and precise with God's Word, and had a true reverence.

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To look at this monstrosity of a translation, boy, it's a far cry. So put this passage, then, in the greater context, the greater chapter, where are we in the story?

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And we've said before, and I've said before, that, you know, you have the Ten Commandments, which was, you know, just given, and that is the

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Mosaic Covenant. That is the tablets of the Covenant, and that is, that's the covenant that God makes with the nation, and then codifies them into a nation state.

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And then all of the succeeding, you know, the passages that come after, are really a commentary on those ten words.

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So we're talking about how you're going to do

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Israel. This is how you're going to be a society. This is how you're going to be able to live together.

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This is, you know, how are we gonna, you know, we said, do not commit murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not spare false, all those, these commands.

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This is, this is you. This is the covenant between you and me, and this is how we're gonna start working it out.

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And he starts off with laws about altars, laws about slaves, and, you know, restitution, social, you know, social justice,

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Sabbaths and festivals. He said, this is how we're gonna be working all this stuff out. So how does this passage, and we, and that's why

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I wanted us to read, you know, a couple of chapters, because, you know, a couple of sentences before, talk about, well, sometimes a slave dies, and there's different restitution, if it's immediate or if it's in a couple of days.

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And then we talked about, you know, this, this statement on miscarriage versus premature birth. And then you start going into, you know, oxen, goring people.

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You know, this is, this is how these people who come out of slavery in Egypt, now they're being forced together as a community, and they're gonna be traveling around before they go into the promised land.

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When they go into the promised land, this is how they're gonna live with each other. So why is this passage so important, so that people can live with each other?

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Well, it's, they have to live, they can't live together with any degree of success if they don't fear

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God, right? So if they don't fear God, I am the Lord, this is how you live, right?

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If they don't fear the Lord, then they're not going to last very long as a society, especially given the harsh realities that they have to endure in the wilderness wanderings, and then into the conquering of the promised land, and so on.

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And so we have a lot of detail being given, but it's about setting out several clear examples of what

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God's justice looks like, and how to live in the light of who He is. Because if who

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God is, this is how you live with one another. And now, when we read these passages today, some of them sound very, very foreign to us, to our experiences.

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And that can throw people as they read it, and then they begin to treat these passages in non -standard ways, rather than taking them for what they are.

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And that can sometimes release somebody to, like, you know, have a fanciful interpretation of a text.

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For example, even if we were to accept the translation of the

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JPS, and we have two people fighting, and somehow there's a pregnant woman nearby, and she gets injured in this fight.

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And let's say that the JPS is, you know, we'll just take it as it is, and she miscarries, okay?

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And then the translation that they have indicates that, okay, there's going to be some sort of fine, or whatever.

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How is that a justification for abortion? Yeah, there's not, even in their reading, there's no real room for intentional miscarriage.

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Right, and in this, in the story, it wasn't some kind of fight between a woman and a man over the fact that she was pregnant.

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That they had some sort of knockdown, drag -out fight, and their life is a mess, and a wreck.

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And so then they go hire someone to do violence to her and the unborn child, and they're not paying a fine, as the text talks about.

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They're paying a fee. It's a service. Yeah, they're hiring someone to destroy life.

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Kind of flips this on its head. It's a very intentional act. This is talking about something that is accidental, right?

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And as bad as the translation is, it still doesn't support abortion. Yeah, it's still a category error.

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It's two separate categories altogether. Yeah, and so in this case, anybody who would read that and come away and say, well, if you, if you take away my right to abortion, you're denying my religious tradition, and point to that, the whole thing, the whole thing is nonsensical.

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It's absurd. Laugh them out of court. Yeah, it's not like people have infallible interpretations.

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There is a correct interpretation. It's God's Word. It's His interpretation. It's not like, well,

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Rabbi Samantha, she's got a good point. This is what her interpretation is, and you just have your interpretation.

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So they kind of stand side by side then, don't they? No, that's not how it works. The text speaks for itself because it's

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God's Word. And just because somebody has some sort of religious zeal or religious tradition in which they believe that they have a right to pursue certain ends, doesn't mean that that is justifiable.

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I mean, there was a whole bunch of, there was a whole bunch of zealous and religious

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Germans who pursued the extinction of the

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Jews in a different kind of Holocaust, you know, less than a hundred years ago. And just because it was part of their religious zeal and fervor to do so, doesn't mean that we have to step back and say, well, who are we to deny them that right?

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So we as Christians, we don't live under the law. So I want to make sure that anybody listening to this, you know, there's different covenantal versus dispensational views, even within our own church, but we are appealing to this

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Exodus passage because it shows God's holiness.

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Exodus shows God's holiness, justice, standards.

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So that's what Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers was really all about.

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It was working out those Ten Commandments that this is who you are in light of who I am and this is how you approach me as a sinful people.

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This is how you live together as mutually sinful people. So yes, we are

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Christians and we are living in the light of Christ, but Christ is one that interprets the

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Old Testament for us. So as Christians, when we're reading these

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Old Testament passages, what things do we need to keep in mind? Because, you know, this is a quote from a rabbi and the person that actually sent this to me is really not all that religious, although she didn't have her children baptized into the

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Catholic Church. That's a different argument altogether, so I'm not really sure where she stands.

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But as a mother, she's actually quoting this passage as a religious person, said this is why

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I should be allowed to do what it is I want to do with my own body, with my own pregnancy. So as Christians, when we look at Exodus 21 in the light of Christ, how do we use passages like this, keeping it in context, talking about God's justice, talking about God's law, because we're under grace, we're not under the law.

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How would you respond to that so that we're making sure that we're responding as Christians in the light of Christ? That's a good question.

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I think first of all, you know, we don't treat it rabbinically, right? Because what's going on, even on social media, is an example of the failure of rabbinicalism, wherein, you know, somebody has a bad translation of a passage because of rabbinical tradition, and then somebody kind of half quotes the passage, and then somebody like half quotes that person, you know, and then all of a sudden, you know, this is your authority?

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Instead, you know, you should go back and read the text for yourself, and more than one translation, and if you see a discrepancy, you have to ask why, and you are fully capable of getting into the text and seeing it for yourself.

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So Jesus encountered several incidents where the scribes and Pharisees, the rabbis of his own day, were doing this with Old Testament texts, right?

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They were taking up things from the Old Testament, and they had mauled it and mangled it, and he would have to say, actually, what was said was, and he would go right back to the text and say, this is actually what was said, okay?

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So that's a Christian thing to do, just straight up go read it for ourselves, and that's where it begins.

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And then when we recognize that, oh yeah, this is an exodus, this is, you know, this is part of the Old Testament, and here's an

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Old Testament case law, okay? So what relevance does this have for us today? Why should

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Christians today be against abortion? And actually, this is a passage that, you know, proves that the killing of a baby demands the death penalty.

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I mean, that's what this passage actually says, life for life. So in that case, you know, yes, but that's the

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Old Testament, that's the Old Testament case law, so why are you appealing to that? Well, first of all, as we've already indicated, everything in the law is the expression of God's character.

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You know, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, and then he says, thus this is how you live, oh you maid in my image, right?

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If you're gonna be in a right relationship with me, I mean, you're gonna have to be cohering to my character, and so he gives all of these instructions and laws and so forth.

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So what do we see here? We're learning about the character of God. How does God value life? How does

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God see justice? In this particular passage, we see, you know, some things, we learn things about husbands and wives, we learn things about civil magistrates, we learn about the value of lives of infants.

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I mean, we learn about all kinds of things in this passage, you know, and these are categories that exist in all of life, whether in the

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Old Testament or the New Testament, because they're bound up in the character of God and the mind of God.

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So that's one side of it, okay? On the question particularly, you know, you can't just point to something in the

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Old Testament and say, now obey, right? That'll get really confusing, really fast.

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The whole thing about fibers, you know, mixing fibers, you can't have a round blend.

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Yeah, there you go, exactly. So when we go and we read the New Testament, we find that Jesus says he did not come to abolish the law, that every jot and tittle of the law is important, but that he came to fulfill it.

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And we learn that he is the end of the law unto righteousness for everyone who believes, and in Romans chapter 10, and we discover that everything that God commanded

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Christ fulfills, and that being bound up in him by faith, and we're following him, that he's going to lead us into obedience to everything that the law means, and he's the definer of what it means.

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So this is why we have some commandments like, do not murder, which in the

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New Covenant is do not murder, and we have some we have some commandments in the

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Old Testament of, you know, don't eat catfish, and in the

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New Covenant said, you know, eat catfish the glory of God, you know. Why are some things different and some things the same can only be answered as we follow

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Christ, and look how is it that he takes up the entirety of the Old Covenant and puts it upon himself as a mantle, and then we follow him as our new

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Adam, so new Moses, so on and so forth. So I think that that's not a very quick answer, but why is this still valid?

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Why, you know, why should we not murder? Well, as we follow

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Christ, we know that murder is against him. Yeah, we have the words of Christ himself in Mark chapter 7 verse 8, in his scathing rebuke of the rabbinic scholars of his day, where he said, you have exchanged the truth of God, the

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Word of God, for the traditions of men. They've supplanted it, and I think that's exactly what this writer had done, and then built upon different traditions, you know, appealing to Babylonian Talmud, and then really their own traditions that they have, you know, today within her circles.

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But this standard that you just quoted, eye for eye, life for life, murder is wrong.

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Yeah, and where does murder begin, right? It begins in the heart, and we, you know, in Jesus, you have heard it said,

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I shall not murder, but I say do you, you know, do not, you know, talk about not hating in your heart, hating someone. So you actually, you have to really hate, you have to hate a life to take it, in the way that abortion, you know, in this passage, you know, people are fighting, and then the woman accidentally gets injured, okay, that wasn't the intention of the fight.

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But in abortion, there's an intentionality there, there's hatred there that precedes the act, and this needs to be acknowledged.

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And of course, there's more than one way to express that hatred, but there has to be hatred there behind it.

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This is why the whole, even those involved in the abortion mills, and locations the abortion mills, and so on, that's why there's such a demonic, a level of demonic activity and presence, you know, involved in these things.

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It's because of just this massive amount of hatred, and this, and the sacrifice of human life.

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When we see that Jesus talks about love, when he talks about what it means to, you know, what does real life look like in following him, and abiding in him, and obeying his commandments, well, he talked about loving one another.

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He talks about, you know, that in the way that the pagans do it, they lowered their authority over others, right?

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My body, my choice, I'll do what I want with the life that's in me, right? And that's a pagan way of looking at authority.

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Jesus says that the greatest among you should be the servant of all. Now, anybody who has had kids knows what kind of a servant you have to become with infants.

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Like, the mother, especially for all the time that she's pregnant, is a servant to that infant.

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She is doing everything for that infant. She is under such toil, and turmoil, and difficulty.

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Giving birth is a traumatic event, and then when you have this little one to take care of, once again, you have to serve this infant so long.

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But, you know what, Jesus says, you know, Jesus says, this is the way, this is the way forward, that we are to serve, you know.

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We think we're so much more powerful, and greater, and, shall we say, viable, and strong, and, you know, we can breathe, and we can think, and this infant inside the womb can't do nearly as much as me.

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I am powerful, and that little life is not. What does Jesus say?

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And the greatest among you should be the servant of all. Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

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Ultimately, as Christians, what are we supposed to be doing? Spilling our blood for our children, rather than spilling their blood for us.

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Straight on. Well said. I'd like to, kind of, since we were busy being thankful about Rovers as a way, being overturned,

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I'd like to, kind of, explore where you guys think this is going for the church nationally, internationally, and even locally, or in different statehoods, because I think that it's gonna get complicated.

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Needless to say, it's gonna get very complicated, but what could it mean at national, state, and local levels for the regular churchgoer on a day -to -day basis?

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That's interesting, yeah. Well, you know, biblically, every time there's a judgment, there's a sifting that occurs.

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And this was a judgment, and in terms of, hey, Rovers' way is overturned.

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It's just natural that when a judgment is made, there's a sifting that occurs. And I think this is going to,

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I think this is going to accelerate the split in evangelicalism. Yeah, so I was talking about this the other day with a couple of our resident scholars here at Sunnyside, Kyle and Daryl, and we were kind of falling in the same place, especially in the

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SBC, not that we're in the SBC, but that we have connections, ties, friends that are involved there.

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And just with the last convention that they've had, there was a very broad range of understanding of how they should deal with the issue of abortion, especially from the top organizations within the

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SBC, and laymen and pastors who have either been a part of the incrementalist movement or the abolitionist movement.

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And it seems, it being kicked back to the states, this could pit state conventions against national conventions.

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It could pit local churches against both the state convention and the national convention.

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So does this look like a decentralization event for the largest denomination in the

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U .S., or are we, is there a chance that it stays somewhat unified?

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I don't see it staying unified. We have an issue now that is irreconcilable.

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When you have the central planners of the SBC so thoroughly entrenched, and they're not going to be dislodged this time like they were last time, and the former conservative resurgence, the backbone is not there this time.

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And when you have, for example, the ERLC approaching abortion by saying things like, what can we do to make abortion no longer necessary?

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It never was. Yeah, it's like, what are you talking about?

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Yeah, please speak clearly. That's your approach. You think you're gonna engage with this issue by saying, well, what could we do to make abortion no longer necessary?

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The proper social programs of economics. To create human flourishing, right? Because human flourishing is their idol, is their main focus, and that's what they're in orbit around, is human flourishing, human flourishing, human flourishing.

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Well, and is it the human flourishing, or is it the appeal, who they're appealing to for that human flourishing? Because they're gonna be, they're not gonna be appealing to the church, are they?

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They're gonna be appealing to the culture. They're gonna be appealing to the state. And I understand that's the focus is the human flourishing, but they're gonna be asking for money from Uncle Sam before they're ever gonna ask local churches to take this up.

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They're gonna talk about, you know, a kind of a unified full -court press that we're going to make abortion unnecessary, which is not, it's kind of like saying, well, what can we do to make prostitution unnecessary, right?

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You know, prostitution is a sin, right? Abortion is a sin. It's murder. Sexual immorality is, what can we do to make divorce unnecessary, right?

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You put whatever sin you want in there, and it's a ridiculous approach. It's a wrangling of words.

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It's unbiblical. So you have that on, you know, at the convention and the previous convention, you have a well -played hand by Bill Askell, wherein you have, for the first time in over 50 years, a resolution presented and passed from the floor that doesn't go through the resolution committee, and that is an abolitionist resolution.

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And the power behind that resolution and the solidarity of the people involved versus the central planners, how are you not going to have a split over this?

35:03

And again, Dylan, you point out, you know, from state to state it's going to be different, and that certainly is something where the overturning of Roe v.

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Wade is not necessarily going to change anything in New York or California or Virginia or Oregon.

35:19

You know, it's not going to change anything in Oklahoma. We still have our work to do here, right?

35:26

We still have our work to end all abortions in Oklahoma. What advantage do we get?

35:32

We don't get, we don't have that excuse anymore of, well, we can't pass anti -abortion legislation because then we're going to be called into federal court by the

35:40

Supreme Court, and we'll have to have all these legal fees and so on. Like, no, we don't have that excuse anymore.

35:46

There's nowhere to hide. There's nowhere to hide, that's right. So are we saying we're thankful for a fight coming then?

35:52

Because that's what we've really gotten, right? Like if now it's the responsibility is back on whose responsibility it's supposed to be for this.

36:00

Yeah. And if we don't, if we aren't thankful for that fight, we're just going to be that same apathetic arm that we've been for so long.

36:10

It's kind of like the situation where you have all these people who are really upset with each other in the bar, you know, they're all kind of like yelling at each other and tensions rising, rising, rising, and all of a sudden someone throws a punch.

36:21

Yeah, Roe v. Wade just got overturned. Yeah. Now what's gonna happen next? I mean, this was a punch to the face, and now what's gonna happen?

36:30

Well, we'll see. National alliances, if you will, are going to be tested now that there's not some ostensible covering like, well, you know, it is the law of the land, so there's not really much we can do about that.

36:45

Let's just focus on what we can control, and now that that excuse has ripped away, you're really gonna see what people's true colors are.

36:53

And that's within the church and politically. It's everywhere. All aspects of society. It's gonna be, but you know, the nature of the split, okay, the nature of the split

37:02

I think is still going to be more along the lines of a city and rule, okay.

37:09

It's gonna be more of a city -rule split than it is state -by -state. The states that are having more of a rule control are the red states.

37:19

Right. The states that have more city control are the blue states. That's just how it works. And so, but it's still, it's still city versus rule where the great divide is.

37:31

And just like in the Southern Baptist Convention, it's not going to be, you know, state convention versus state convention.

37:38

I mean, there's going to be people in all of these conventions that look at this, you know, differently.

37:44

There are some people that are upset that Roe v. Wade was overturned because they feel like this is a step back from a social justice, you know.

37:54

And then there are others who are rejoicing. Well, I think that about wraps it up for us today.

38:00

We're gonna go ahead and ask what we're thankful for again, because why not have two things we're thankful for in an episode.

38:06

Michael, you want to start us off? Yeah, I'm thankful, thankful for my, let's see, fifthborn,

38:16

Samuel Tobias. We had a good time this afternoon swimming in the pool and just had a blast together.

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It was like, it was the first time I think that he and I have been on our own without other people around, I don't know how long.

38:29

So we got to play together. So it was fun. That's great. We love Toby. Yeah, he's a lot of fun.

38:35

Yeah, Toby's a lot of fun. I am thankful for surrogate grandparents. My wife and I were married in, it's been a while, 2004.

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And then one of the places we were stationed when we were newly married was Tucson. But we had no grandparent support.

38:55

That's actually where my daughter was born, in Tucson. And we had this older couple in our church,

39:01

Bill and Ruth. Bill was a former A -10 pilot and commander out at Davis Moth, and I was still active duty at the time.

39:09

And he became something of a mentor to me. And Ruth was very active in the Crisis Pregnancy Center there in Tucson.

39:16

And they just sort of adopted us. And then we sort of adopted them as surrogate grandparents to Elizabeth.

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They were there at her first birthday, and they've just been a part of her life for the last 15 years. And we're incredibly thankful for them.

39:32

Bill is turning 80 here very soon. And we are just, oh well, you know, there's gonna be a party and stuff for him.

39:44

And I wish I could be there. Unfortunately, work is not allowing me to. But my wife and daughter are out there celebrating with Bill and Ruth, our surrogate grandparents, who love us and that we dearly love them.

40:00

Amen. Along with the grandparents thing, I'm thankful to God for my wife's mother came out here recently.

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And we hosted her for about five days. Just very glad to have Joyce and what she added to my family whenever she was here with us.

40:18

Amen to that. Well, Heather and I are both thankful for God's mercy that she is still tired and nauseous and sometimes forgetful.

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Because that means the Lord has been merciful to continue to develop that child that grows within her womb.

40:39

The last couple miscarriages we had, there were no symptoms. And that was the first signs for us.

40:44

So we're still praying and thankful for nauseousness and tiredness and all those other things.

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And that's a weird thing to be thankful for. But we are so grateful that that baby grows still.

40:58

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Happy Knot Red.