Infanticide was common in India and China until contraceptives and abortion lessened birth rate as now. Here they threw them in holy rivers, fires, put much salt in mouth or left in jungles. In China most used method was leaving on ice to freeze.
One missionary lady was returning at dusk after visiting a remote village in china. While passing over a snowed meadow she heard a baby’s faint cry. She walked near the sound and found a girl infant. She lifted it to see its feet already frostbitten. In a few minutes she would have been dead. She carried it to her mission and treated her. One foot was totally lost. She was taught to walk on crutch. The unmarried lady missionary adopted her, to obey Christ. It brightened her life and dispelled her loneliness away from home.
Intelligent and smart she progressed in school. After graduating she also dedicated herself in mission like her adoptive mother. She taught in mission school.
But she was often haunted by the thought of her parents, who had left her to die. Her adoptive mother had told how she found her, never hiding anything. She didn’t remember her parents being a suckling when rejected. But she felt pain whenever other parent’s love for children aroused a longing for them. Besides, being Christian she knew Christ’s exhortation to love enemies. So she thought that to obey Christ she must love her parents, her worst enemies.
So knowing from mother the name of village and probable time, she ventured to enquire from surviving old-timers. They didn’t live long then in primitive China. Repeated enquires about a missing infant about that time pinpointed an old emaciated widowed lady. When that girl visited and asked her, perplexed she confessed about the incident. She was further asked if she remembered a body-mark on that infant, she told about a mole near the ear. The girl now showed her mole near the ear.
The hag now began to weep uncontrollably both in remorse and joy, beating her breast. Daughter’s assurance of love and forgiveness furthered her remorse. She told mother that as Christ has saved her, he is going to save her too. He had told to love enemies, so she had come to love her.
She couldn’t be blamed much as poverty, social norms and harsh winter forced it on her. That time China was in famine and anarchy. Obviously she was almost starving in tatters in her dilapidated hut these days. Her poor surviving children scarcely supported her.
She took her to live with her. It enriched and energized her. Latter when foreign missionaries were deported she became in charge of that mission. Then she saved many villagers including her village by mission funds during famine and war.
Similarly apathetic Jews of Bethlehem condemned infant Jesus to die in cold and snow by refusing to give shelter. Infanticide that way was not uncommon there. But God saved the infant which in turn saved many of his enemies, us.