30 and Counting!

Orchids Galore! Ginter Botanical Garden.  Copyright 2012: singeronthesand

Well, you've made your bed - now lie in it;

you wanted your own way - now, how do you like it?

Proverbs 1:31 [The Message]

There is a 33-year-old man in Tennessee named Desmond who has fathered 30 children with 11 women - nine of whom were born in the last three years.  His youngest child is a toddler and the oldest is 14.  He is "something of a local celebrity" in his home town - a thought that boggles my mind!  I realize that anyone can be a "celebrity" these days, but to become one because of your ability to mindlessly reproduce?   Recently, Desmond went to court to seek relief from his child support payments, which are impossible for him to pay on his minimum-wage salary.  It would be hard to make child-support payments on a meager salary for just one child, much less thirty!  The state requires him to divide 50% of his earnings among the eleven families - with some receiving only about $1.50 per month.

One solution would be for this man to keep his pants on, but even the officials dealing with him admit that they cannot force him to do so.  A second solution would be birth control; however, as he has apparently never tried that prior to this point, he is not likely to start now.  And let's not even get started on the subject of the eleven women who have been his partners in this tragic tale. I cannot even begin to imagine the "whys" and "wherefores" of their side of the story.  Tragic?  Yes, indeed - tragic for the thirty children who have been born into a world of poverty and need - loved, hopefully, by their mothers, but without a father figure in the home, and only occasionally in their lives, due to the selfish choices of one man and eleven women.  

Solomon personifies Wisdom as a woman crying in the streets, begging each passerby to stop, listen, and allow wisdom and understanding to direct their paths, rather than mindlessly stumbling along on their own.  In the New Testament, James admonishes his readers that if they are lacking in wisdom, they should ask God for it, who will give it liberally.  I, for one, would like to accept that gift, and rely on a Wisdom far greater than my own.