Beatrice Archer Martin
Welcoming the second Martin grandchild.
by Rod D. Martin
August 17, 2015
This evening we welcome Beatrice Archer Martin, the second Martin grandchild, at 5:42pm, 7 lbs, 13 oz and 20.5 inches long. She is the daughter of our beloved Archer and Elizabeth, and the baby sister of precious Annabelle.
Beatrice will grow up in a world moving faster than she, or anyone else, can grasp. Literally. Hyperloop technology promises ground transit at just under Mach 1. Self-driving cars promise individual ground speeds of 150 mph. In Beatrice's lifetime, scramjets will take us point-to-point anywhere on Earth in two hours flat, and -- with the addition of a small reusable rocket engine -- beyond Earth to space.
The world is about to get a whole lot smaller. Indeed, in Beatrice and Annabelle's lifetimes, we are likely to start speaking of "the worlds."
That's a two-edged sword, of course. The Islamic State would happily make both of them sex slaves and then behead them. They aren't the only ones who would, nor the only ones with a malignant, expansionist agenda that's meeting with success. Socialism is on the march again, as it ever is. It carries its own malignancies, and in the preceding century managed to murder more people than all other evils ever have. Freedom isn't free. Like all generations before it, Beatrice's will have to pay for it, assuming our generation and the generation of her parents pay for it first. That actually remains to be seen.
The freedom that counts most, of course, is the freedom offered only in the Gospel of our Redeemer. Christ Jesus gave His life that all who call upon Him might live. It is a life that matters more than this one, in that it is eternal, and its opposite is particular grim. But it is also a life that matters more during this one. This Gospel is not merely a life: it is life, life to a dying race. It is the seed of a crop that can meet every need, repair every brokenness, comfort every mourner, fulfill the promise in everything that exists.
We pray that our sweet Beatrice will love our Savior even more than we love her. And we pray that she will bless millions if not billions through the life and example she leads.
