Life Chain Sunday

Mother Teresa said, "America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign. Any country that accepts abortion, is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what it wants. It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish." 

The year Mike and I were engaged, we participated in Life Chain Sunday in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life as we stood side-by-side with other pro-life friends from hundreds of churches. The chain that year stretched for 5 miles, was in the shape of a cross, and involved thousands of people. It was October, 1991--almost 20 years ago. We made a commitment that year to be involved in Life Chain no matter where we were, until the abortion holocaust ends. I don't foresee that ever happening this side of heaven. So among our other pro-life activities, we stand for one hour on the first Sunday in October, every year, rain or shine. Our children have also been involved, even when they were in utereo and I ended the hour with swollen ankles. Then they were in strollers with signs taped to the front...now they just stand with us, knowing that one hour of prayer does make a difference--if for no other reason than their own heart is reminded that murders happen every day in their own hometown and hardly anyone even sheds a tear.

Are there other issues that tug at God's heart? You betcha. But this is one issue that He has laid on our hearts, and we will be neither silent nor ashamed.

"Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, 'But we knew nothing about this,' does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it?
Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?"  Proverbs 24:11-12