Kay

“To refuse that procreative role and to throw upon society that nurturing responsibility is to abdicate her highest calling and greatest usefulness to the Creator and to His created order. Women are called upon to make sacrifices; they are challenged to live selflessly. These sacrifices and a selfless life are essential for the continuation of the generations. Women cannot shun this greatest responsibility of maternity without endangering all of civilization.

Unfortunately, individualism, springing out of a postmodern culture, has driven parents inward to seek only personal goals and to be manipulated by selfish whims. Materialism has captured their hearts so that things are more important than children. This self-centered ideology allows many socially approved and legitimate right ways of doing things, and the right way is to be determined merely by personal choice or community consensus.

In Scripture, godly women were not concerned with whether or not they would receive discrimination in the marketplace but rather with whether or not their wombs were barren. Childlessness was looked upon as an affliction, an indication of worthlessness and insignificance (Gen. 29:32; 30:1). Women were not pining away, pleading with the Almighty that they might be priests or prophets. They were praying for the privilege of bearing a child.”
“God grant that we in this enlightened age do not “drop the ball” but rather hold to the ageless pattern of leaving life and death in the worthy hands of the Creator God.” – Dorothy Patterson

Lydia,
It saddened me to think of several childless couples I know perhaps reading these statements. If becoming pregnant was a life or death situation for her, I bet she’d choose to use contraception.