Life Issues Contest - 6-8th Grade
Information for the 2021 Life Issues Contest has now been released! The topic will chosen by National Lutherans for Life, so please check their website or our Facebook page later this fall. Please see the attached flyer for directions about this year's contest. Due date for submission is February 28th, 2021. Additionally, you can read the winning entries from last year!
1st place Essay
Protecting the Innocent by Brandon Raikes (St. John Lutheran School, Rochester, MI)
When people think of an unborn baby, sometimes people think of just a little blob of tissue in the mother's womb, not the entire life that the baby will live, all the people that this life will affect, or all the emotions that this child will feel. That “little blob” could grow up to save lives, change the world, or invent the cure to cancer. God has a plan for that specific life. That “little blob” is alive.
When I was in my mom’s womb, my mom went on a dolphin excursion. The dolphins seemed very interested in my mom’s stomach, and when she asked why, the worker told her that the dolphins could hear two heartbeats and were curious. A heartbeat is an amazing thing. The heart, when it beats, sends blood throughout the body, and that blood keeps you alive. I was alive.
Everyone is alive before they are born. Psalm 139:13 says “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb.” This is talking about how God created us in the womb, and how we were still alive then. Unborn babies are alive. In fact, some doctors will “abort” a baby at the end of pregnancy or as the child is being born, when that child is very much alive. We do not have the right to take away their life.
Some pregnant mothers claim that they have the right to have an abortion because it is “their body, their choice” but it is not their body. They are not killing themselves. There is an entirely different person inside of them and they do not have the right to take their life away. Exodus 20:13 says “You shall not murder”, and that is what abortion really is: it is the murder of an innocent child.
If somebody murders a pregnant woman, they are charged with two murders: the mom and the unborn child. If the unborn child is counted as being alive in some court cases, why is it not counted in abortion cases? Charging someone with two murders makes sense. In the one action of murder, two lives were taken, two stories ended and two people died. Abortion being legal does not make sense. In both cases, murder happened and people need to remember that whether you can see them or not, a person is a person.
All in all, abortion, said plainly, is the murder of an innocent child and is not justified. It is our job to protect the innocent. It is not the mom’s body. It is the unborn child’s life.
2nd Place Essay
God’s Love Makes Me Normal by Harrison Thoma (Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church, Hartland, MI)
What does it mean to have a right to life?
I think that sometimes people believe it means you only have the right to life if you are normal. But what does it mean to be normal?
Some people believe that to be normal means you have to be independent. They think you have to be able to walk and talk and be like everyone else. I’m only thirteen, and I’ve met quite a few people in my life. Some of them have been different. Honestly, there have been a few I couldn’t even understand. They spoke oddly. They were very different from me. I could do things they had difficulty doing. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned these people are often called “disabled.” I have also learned that because they’re different, people treat them like they’re not normal.
But in God’s eyes, they are normal, and here’s why.
First of all, what’s really abnormal in this world is sin. God did not put sin into His design for creation. We’re all sinners, so that means we’re all abnormal.
Second, if everyone is already abnormal, then there’s no point in putting people into categories of abnormal or normal. When it comes to being a living human, abnormal is normal. If you are alive, you’re normal. If you’re normal, you need Jesus. And just because someone needs insulin to survive or maybe needs a few more weeks in a mother’s belly to grow, doesn’t mean that person is any different than anyone else. They’re alive. To God, they’re normal, and they need His love and His help just like everyone else.
In the Bible, Jesus shows this love to all kinds of people we might think are abnormal. He heals lepers (Luke 17:11-19). He heals blind people (Mark 10:46-52). He heals paralyzed people (Luke 5:17-26). But He also had to heal “normal” people. He had to heal Nicodemus and Peter of their ignorance (John 3:1-21; John 19:39; Matthew 16:21-28; John 21:15-19). He had to heal entire crowds of everyday people who were hungry (Matthew 14:13-21).
Why does Jesus deal with this abnormal world this way? Because He cares! He knows that no matter who we are, we’re all abnormal in sin. He knows only His love makes a person normal. And who does He love? Everyone! Sick or healthy, black or white, tall or short, born or unborn, disabled or abled, it doesn’t matter! From the time you are conceived, He loves you!
So, the point to all of this is that just because someone needs a little more help than others, doesn’t mean they’re any different than the rest of us in God’s eyes. They are alive. They are abnormal in sin, but God loves them and makes them normal in His love.
That makes me happy because I’m an abnormal sinner like everyone else, but I know God sees me as His normal child.
2021 Life Contest Rules