October — my favorite month. By February I’ll be swearing I never said this, but in October I actually like being cold when I get out of bed in the morning. I’m ready for a trip to the apple orchard, pumpkin carving, and some cider doughnuts (if I ever get around to making them).

October means it’s time to scale the mountain of sweaters on the closet shelf and fold and restack them all neatly. Right now, pull on the wrong one and you’ve got yourself an avalanche. And I know that no matter how nicely I organize them now, I’ll soon be right back to tossing them up to the top of the heap and hoping they stick the landing.

In October, spring is usually the last thing on my mind. The only thing I’ve ever really liked about spring is wisteria. Around here, it’s either wisteria or azaleas, and while I don’t hate azaleas as much as I used to, they’re still nowhere near the top of my list of favorite flowers. Technically, I don’t have a list of favorite flowers, but if I did, azaleas would be way down at the bottom, below paperwhites (which smell like a nursing home) and whatever that flower is that smells like rotting flesh.

Anyway, though, this year is different. Spring seems much too close for comfort, because come next April, we’re having a baby. We’re. Having. A. Baby.

Holy crap. I still have a moment’s panic when I see those words in black and white. Yesterday morning, I actually forgot for a while. About three hours after I got up, I suddenly remembered that I was pregnant. It was both funny and terrifying.

My first ultrasound a few weeks ago finally made it seem real — before that, I just couldn’t connect the plus sign on the pregnancy test with the idea of bringing a baby home. But watching him wave his arms and do little froggy leaps with his legs, not to mention seeing and hearing his heart beat… well, I understand much better now why pro-life groups want women to undergo an ultrasound before committing to an abortion.

And I’m even more clueless as to how anyone could look at those images and claim that the child they reveal is somehow less than human and will remain so until he actually leaves my body. It’s like suddenly deciding that the sun revolves around the earth just because you want it to. Say it loud enough and get enough people to agree with your position, and what? It suddenly becomes truth? I don’t think so.

Lies don’t turn into truth just because you choose to believe them, or even because the Supreme Court rules them so. Truth is not the meaningless mass of relativity we like to pretend it is, and our deliberate ignorance of absolutes does not absolve us of responsibility.

It amazes me that with all that we have learned and discovered in the past century, we’re more blind than any age has ever been. Wouldn’t it have been easier to believe that an eye simply happened to develop when all people knew was that eyes were round and allowed them to see? But now that we know all about rods and cones, how images are received, and which part of the brain processes what we see, we decide that all of this randomly fell into just the right place to give us sight, and anyone who believes otherwise is dismissed as backwards and unscientific.

From elementary school through college, I heard about the scientific method and put it into practice in little classroom experiments. It’s based on deductive reasoning, meaning that conclusions are drawn from evidence, which is collected through experimentation that yields consistent and thus predictable results. If an event cannot be demonstrated or reproduced through experimentation, then it cannot be considered scientific. It is, at best, a theory.

So how, then, can we set these principles aside simply because we’ve found an idea we like but can’t prove? Not only that, but we call this idea scientific fact, teach it exclusively to our children, and mock anyone who dares to point out our hypocrisy.

A few years ago, when my airline miles were about to expire, I used a few of them to subscribe to National Geographic. I did not renew that subscription, in part because I like Smithsonian better, but also because of one article about some exciting new “evidence” of a missing link in human evolution. I laughed out loud when I saw their artist’s rendering of this newly discovered ancestor. The actual discovery, which consisted “mainly of jawbone fragments, upper and lower teeth, and a thigh bone,” was depicted in the drawing in solid black contours. Yet around these, in blue, was constructed a misshapen, hunched, vaguely human figure. To me, this pretty much summed up the “science” of evolution. Decide beforehand what you want to find, then make whatever you do find fit the constraints of that predetermined result.

But evolution’s appeal lies in the idea that if we simply evolved over billions of years from shapeless blobs into the amazingly complex creatures that we are today, then we owe our existence to mere chance and are accountable to no one. Like rebellious teenagers, we’ve decided that our Father is out-of-touch and old-fashioned, and that we don’t want Him interfering in our lives.

I wish that every professing Christian would sit down and watch “The Truth Project,” from Focus on the Family.

In a recent study, the Barna Research Group revealed a stunning statistic that continues to reverberate throughout the evangelical world. Only 9 percent of professing Christians have a biblical worldview.

Because of this, today’s believers live very similarly to non-believers. A personal sense of significance is rarely experienced, we spend our money and time on things that fail to satisfy and we begin to wonder what life’s ultimate purpose really is. We are, in short, losing our bearings as a people and a nation….

The Truth Project is a DVD-based small group curriculum comprised of 12 one-hour lessons taught by Dr. Del Tackett. This home study is the starting point for looking at life from a biblical perspective. Each lesson discusses in great detail the relevance and importance of living the Christian worldview in daily life.

I know that Christian liberty is a very popular topic these days, and I agree that the so-called fundamentalist movement has created an extra-Scriptural list of requirements that give Christianity a bad name and cause a huge number of unnecessary conflicts within the body of Christ. But separating our faith from our lifestyle simply isn’t possible. James says the only way we can demonstrate our faith is through our actions, and faith without works is dead faith. That doesn’t mean we have to dress in sackcloth and ashes and stand on a street corner waving a Bible. But people should be able to see a difference in our lives.

I remember a man a friend and I witnessed to a few years ago while we were on vacation — we didn’t initiate the conversation. I’m ashamed to say it hadn’t even crossed my mind. We were just talking with him when he suddenly said, “You’re Christians, aren’t you?” We said that we were, and he said, “I could see it in your eyes. I don’t know what you have that I don’t, but I need it.” We hadn’t noticed anything particularly unusual about our eyes that day. We weren’t dressed “like Christians.” We had been talking with him about secular music. There hadn’t been the slightest whisper of our faith, but he could see it.

I guess I’m thinking about all of these issues more since I’m contemplating the responsibility of bringing up a child. The world he (or she!) is coming into is so full of fear, ignorance, hatred, and greed that it’s an intimidating prospect. I want our child to live above all of that, secure in the knowledge that the Creator/Redeemer has ultimate control over everything, whether or not the sinful world acknowledges Him. And I want to teach him (or her!) that by example as well as by word. I’m so disturbed by the steps towards socialism that our country is taking — allowing government its first major foothold in the business world (which will not be its last, because when has the federal government ever retreated from a part of our lives which we’ve “temporarily” handed over?), demanding that the government provide free healthcare to all of its citizens, and simply relying more and more on our imperfect government to perfect our lives for us.

These problems won’t just cease to concern me, but I’m trying to realize that no matter how screwed up our government is, no matter who is elected president next month, and no matter how I feel about it, nothing in this world can happen unless God allows it. I really don’t like either candidate, but I believe that Obama’s combination of inexperience and arrogance are especially dangerous. Putting a newbie who’s unwilling to acknowledge his need for guidance in a position of leadership is s scary idea. Maybe he’ll surprise me with some innate qualities of statesmanship and wisdom I just haven’t seen yet. That would be great. Or maybe God plans to use him to remind Christians that the answers to our problems as a nation can’t be found in a sinful human being, no matter how many enticing promises he makes. By the grace of God, we’ve survived bad presidents before, and doubtless He can bring us through four more years if He chooses to.

So, while I’m hardly living a “que sera, sera” life these days, I am really trying to keep in mind that the same God who made October, sheep (for sweaters), and apples (for cider doughnuts) also made azaleas, evolutionists, and Obama. And far be it from me to question His purposes.