The Aroma of Christ

Yesterday,  Cities4Life teams that volunteer on the sidewalks of the busiest abortion center in Charlotte did a different volunteer job. We gathered and cleaned garbage from the street where the busiest abortion mill in Charlotte is located. Our organization "adopted" the street. On the very street where thousands of babies are killed each year, a small sign is posted: "adopted by Charlotte Cities4Life."

As soon as I heard about the garbage clean-up date, I signed up to help. The symbolism was too magnificent to ignore. We may not have been the ones that dumped all that garbage, but we could pitch in and be the ones to clean it up.

While gathering garbage, I found several articles of clothing in wooded areas. Countless liquor bottles, cigarette butts, soda cans, trash bags, and even an old television set. One of our workers found a copperhead snake. (eeeeek!!!!)  We collected at least twenty huge bags of garbage.

At one point, I picked up a full soda bottle. I opened it to dump it out before putting it in my garbage bag and it spilled all over my hands. It smelled so disgusting that I wanted to vomit. I don't think it was just old soda in there. I had to spend the next hour smelling that filth and trying not to spread it on any other part of my body. The stench soaked into my soul.

Then I reached the abortion mill itself. It is in the background in the photo above. Even in the mid-afternoon, cars were still there. Babies were still dying. But I wore the vest of the city garbage picker-upper, and felt powerless.  I was not there armed with literature, resources, or a pro-life mobile ultrasound. On Mondays, I show up before the abortionist arrives, with all those tools, and can influence women while their babies yet live.

Yesterday, I was an observer, picking up the garbage that people left behind. I stood there, watching the people leaving the abortion center, knowing their child was no longer with them. Dead. Left behind...like garbage. Somehow, it struck me anew with great despair over what happens there.

We piled our bags of garbage, took a photo of all of us by our "cities4life" sign. Then I dashed to the nearby McDonalds' bathroom and scrubbed my hands and arms. I scrubbed and scrubbed till my skin felt raw, but still the smell of death and rot remained.

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2 Corinthians 2:14-17

¹⁴ But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. ¹⁵ For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, ¹⁶ to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? ¹⁷ For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.