Barely eight weeks after one of the worst natural disasters in history, news of the devastation of the Indian Ocean tsunami has been relegated to the inside pages – or the closing sound bite on the nightly news. It’s not the lead story any longer. We’ve apparently reached the saturation point on how much horrific detail can be absorbed.

But one story has lingered.

“Baby 81,” a four-month old Sri Lankan infant swept from his mother’s arms, has finally been identified. He was pulled alive from a heap of mud, debris and corpses, and became the 81st patient admitted to a small hospital in the coastal town of Kalmunai. Nine couples quickly claimed the child was theirs – and for eight weeks, officials sought to determine who “Baby 81’s” parents really were.

This week they did. “Baby 81” belongs to Jenita and Murugupillai Jeyarajah – the couple who insisted from the very beginning that he was their son, Abilass. DNA tests confirmed it; the Jeyarajah’s were the only couple who submitted to the testing. They knew beyond certainty that he was theirs.

I don’t have children, but I can’t fathom that a mother and a father would not know their child beyond a shadow of a doubt. I can only imagine the unbearable grief at their own losses that must have made the other parents claim the surviving tsunami baby. That they would hurt enough to do so is unspeakably sad to me.

The tsunami that swept Abilass from the protective arms of his mother killed hundreds of thousands of people, orphaned children, and decimated families, homes and towns in nearly a dozen nations. Records that might identify both victims and survivors were lost. But in his very body the little tsunami baby bore the truth about his parentage. And in the end, he could not be separated from the ones to whom he belonged.

There may come a day when any relatives or witnesses who could identify me are gone. When church records have crumbled to dust. When I can’t even remember my own name. But my identity has been secured by the Holy Spirit who resides in me – and He will testify as surely as any molecular evidence that I belong to God. Like the tsunami baby, the invisible will prove what can no longer be verified…and there is no force large enough to separate me from the One in whose family I will permanently reside.

“The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God…For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 16; 38-39, NASB)

© Leigh McLeroy 2005