Today’s post is written by the President and Founder of Deeper Still, Karen Ellison. Karen has a book that just came out called Healing the Hurt that Won’t Heal, Freedom for the Abortion-Wounded and Help for the Church They Fear.
The first time I visited the National Memorial for the Unborn, I was taken aback by how deeply it affected me. I knew it was going to be profound, but I think I was surprised by how strongly I felt the presence of Jesus. Even as I first stepped over the threshold before I even got to the wall of names, tears began to well up in my eyes. I knew I was on holy ground. As my husband and I walked into the room of the wall of names, it took my breath away. We spent the next hour just silently reading the names and the epitaphs and looking at the letters and gifts people had left on the granite shelf.
I think the reason I sensed Jesus’ presence so strongly that day was because He was and is so pleased that a group of people took the time, money, and effort to create a space and a place to honor those children that the world discards without a second thought. In Jesus’ eyes, these children have names and identities and are now full of eternal destiny.
These children were not war heroes. They didn’t accomplish some major feat the world would acclaim. They did not even die from a disease where family and friends spent many long hours in the hospital praying for them and loving them before they had to finally let them go. The only thing these children brought to their existence is that Father God created them and began to knit them together in the womb of their mothers here on earth. From our perspective, they were a liability, but from heaven’s perspective, they were full of destiny.
I think that’s why the affirmation of Jesus’ presence is so strong in that little plot of land in Chattanooga. It’s because some of God’s people valued these children that were heaven sent but earth rejected and saw to it that they could be honored by displaying their names.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 2:14, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolish to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
1 Corinthians 1:27-29 states, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”
Aren’t you glad you were honored enough to have been given something as simple as a name? If you have a name, you matter. Isaiah 43:1 says God calls us by name. Have you ever read the pages and pages of genealogies in the Bible? I know they have historical significance, but I wonder if the Lord had all those names recorded so that we, millennia later, would understand that these were real people that made Biblical history and the Lord knows them all by name. We are not some random existential biological composite that emerged out of nothingness. By no means!
We were created by a faithful and intentional Heavenly Father who knit us together in our mother’s womb, who breathed into us the breath of life, and who dignified us with a name.
– Karen A. Ellison,
Healing the Hurt that Won’t Heal, Freedom for the Abortion-Wounded and Help for the Church they Fear (Click on to learn more or to order on www.GoDeeperStill.org )
Father, forgive us, forgive us as a nation for not cherishing what you called treasured. Forgive us for choosing our own rights and destiny instead of trusting you with each of these precious ones you ordained for life before even the world we live in and enjoy was spoken into existence. Who are we to think we can take a life when you, oh Lord, are the giver of life. Oh Lord, forgive us, heal the hearts of the people in our land and turn hearts to value what you value. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.