What if pro-life people were known not by our picket lines but by our radical, sacrificial efforts to provide homes for unwanted babies?
What if every woman who was considering an abortion could walk into a crisis pregnancy center and find that her pregnancy and delivery costs would be covered and her baby able to be adopted by a loving family? What if pro-life organizations and churches banded together to fund and streamline adoptions for families willing to radically love like this? What if there was an initiative, a program, a ministry, that could fund and coordinate these efforts by uniting donors, churches, families, and government adoption agencies? What if this is the way that Jesus is calling us to take a stand for life-- not just voting a certain way, but living and sacrificing for this cause?
Seriously: what can we do to make this happen?
For too long, abortion has been treated in the church as a political issue. It's not; it's a gospel issue. It's a discipleship issue. It's a "love as I have loved you" issue. Politics is easier than gospel-driven, lay-down-your-life discipleship. It's easier to hold a sign and shout slogans than to open your home and your heart and upend your life to heal to the hurting and rescue those being sent to slaughter. But Jesus has called us to more than slogans; he has called us to sacrifice. Only that kind gospel-driven discipleship changes hearts and changes nations.
So here's what I'm proposing: let's take back the pro-life agenda from the pundits, politicians, and lobbyists by uniting churches and organizations around an explicitly gospel-driven mission to love vulnerable women and rescue vulnerable babies.
Here's what I see needs to happen:
1) we need individuals and families willing to be radical in their obedience to Jesus and their love for the least of these by adopting every baby who would otherwise be aborted. We also need families who will not just adopt babies, but who will "adopt," take care of, provide for, and love young women who would otherwise choose abortion.
2) We need donors and churches to sacrificially fund both these adoptions and the care for these young women. We need to cover pregnancy and delivery costs, as well as adoption costs.
3) We need to network with crisis pregnancy centers and government adoption agencies to streamline this process so that crisis pregnancy centers can smoothly and efficiently connect willing families with vulnerable women, and handle the paperwork, costs, and legal issues associated with adoption in the United States.
4) We need some sort of ministry, initiative, or program to coordinate all these moving pieces and raise funds and awareness for this vital work.
I don't know how to make this happen. I don't know who to talk to or what steps to take. Somebody who reads this: please, take this idea and run with it. Make this happen. What I do know is that it's time to stop talking the talk and time to start walking the walk, and laying down our lives for the least of these, as Jesus is calling us to:
"Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." ~John 13:34-35
"Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, 'Behold, we did not know this,' does not He who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not He who keeps watch over your soul know it?" ~Proverbs 24:11-12
"Is not this the kind of fasting that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily... If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday." ~Isaiah 58:6-10
No comments:
Post a Comment