Saturday, December 20, 2008

But at what cost...


So it's a cancer free baby for Christmas is it?

Sounds wonderful on the face of it, right? Well, what's actually happened is that embryos with the gene for this type of breast cancer have been discarded and this one, free from the gene, has been kept. So, when the mother says, "We are eliminating the gene from our line." she is actually describing the elimination of a line of family. That's people, folks. The message being sent here is that if you are going to suffer breast cancer then it is better that you, as a person, never even existed.

An obvious question is begged but it's not new. "Screening" is available for more and more conditions - how many of us would not have made it through the genetic sieve due to a propensity towards a certain type of disease or illness? Are we seriously going to say that a life involving disease is a life worth nothing?

I find all of this very unsettling.

The pursuit of perfection is understandable but, at what cost?


Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Four days in Florida...


Ali and I have just returned from four days in Pensacola - what a great time! We'd never been to America before and loved the part we saw. We went to meet up with Roy who was at Brownsville Assembly of God for three nights.

I simply enjoyed everything about the trip (oh, apart from getting lost between the airport and the hotel when we arrived...). The sun shines so brightly, the cars are so big, the roads are so wide and empty, the beach was beautiful, the flying was exciting, the hotel was perfect for us...

The photo was taken on Gulf Breeze beach - it looks like a postcard, doesn't it? So beautiful. I've posted a lot more photos on my Facebook page. I think you have to be my "friend" to see them, I'm not sure?

We think this was only the third time in nearly 14 years of marriage that we've been away together on our own (one of those was our honeymoon)! Hmm, maybe we could do it more frequently!

It wasn't just the place and the weather that made it so good, though. It was the whole package. It was the fact that we travelled thousands of miles to go to three meetings and hook up with Roy, Mel and the kids, that God spoke to us, that we were prayed for, that we worshipped Jesus together.

A wonderful trip. Special.