Christian marriage is by its nature an adventure. When a man and a woman say to each other, “I will die to myself, and love you every day until I die, come what may,” they consent to an adventure, for only the Lord can know what’s coming for them. When they introduce birth control into their marriage, however, they begin to say No to adventure and replace it with predictability and control. They close themselves off from the wildness of God’s will.

For of course there is nothing God loves so much as his children, and thus there is no conceit so towering as that conceit with which a husband and wife say to each other, “Let’s limit the creativity of the Creator; let’s give Him only 2.”

The only real adventure in marriage is openness to conception, because in this openness the couple says to Christ, “Our marriage is your vessel; do with it what you will.” In so saying, the couple preserves the most fundamentally vital element of the marriage adventure. For there is no giver wilder than Christ, and there is no gift so wild as a child.

This message is part of The Trad Store’s pro-life series, which seeks to provide straight talk about what it really means to be pro-life.