“Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.” Psalm 46:6
Dear Heavenly Father, lift your voice through the many voices of others to change our culture to value life. Soften the hearts of your people to melt in this land. Open ears so they can hear and become torch-bearers to spread the message of life. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
This past Sunday, January 20, was Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. This is a day set apart to honor life. Sanctity of Human Life is not only about awareness of life in the womb but the need to honor all lives, whether just conceived or one-hundred and three or somewhere in between. It is about cherishing those with special needs as well as celebrating those blessed with abilities beyond our human comprehension. In essence, all life is worthy of celebration and honor, because all humans are created in the image of God. We are all image-bearers.
This past Sunday, my family and I went to the National Memorial for the Unborn in Chattanooga. It is a powerful place with a wall full of plaques honoring children lost to abortion. If you go, you will be impacted, and you won’t be able to help it. Everyone should go.
While we were there, my sixteen-year old son, confessed something…something that took great courage and trust to speak out. He told me that a couple years ago he was pro-choice, and thought women should have a right to choose whether they wanted to have their baby or not. But now he understands that it isn’t about a women’s right to choose whether or not they want to have a baby but about a life inside the womb and it isn’t right to take that life.
Somewhere between two years ago and now, his heart changed. He saw the hurt abortion caused women and men. He saw the devastation in the lives of those it impacted and he had a revelation of the value of life. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but there must have been voices that spoke truth that penetrated his heart.
This is what our world needs…voices. We need men and women freed from the wounds of abortion to stand up and speak life and truth so other young men, like my son, can hear words of truth and decide to take a stand for valuing life.
The Founder and President of Deeper Still, Karen Ellison, wrote a book that will be released soon that speaks truth, Healing the Hurt that Won’t Heal-Freedom for the Abortion-Wounded and Help for the Church They Fear.
It isn’t available yet, but it is coming soon. This book is a great tool for healing if you have had an abortion, a tool for understanding how abortion wounds, and for the church to understand what one-third of their congregation are living with and how to address this great need.
If we want our young men and women to understand and value life, it starts with us. It starts with us speaking words of life and love and compassion to those who are hurting. This is how a culture changes, one heart at a time, and then that person speaks life, and then another, until the message of love and healing is spread throughout the nations. We cannot change a culture with laws, it starts with individual hearts.