So What Does God Tell Us is Our Job Here on Earth?

I know if you follow my blog you are breathlessly awaiting the verdict on the proper attire for a prolife sidewalk counselor in the frigid winter. Did my heated gloves and heated coat work? Was I warm? More importantly, was that warmth conveyed to the women who were streaming in to abort their children in time for New Year’s Celebrations?

The answer is uncertain. To be determined. An unequivocal maybe.

First, on the warming of hearts that had turned so cold to their babies that they were willing to kill them to avoid the struggle of raising them... One woman chose life and one might have. She was smiling and nodded to me as she left, but she did not stop or answer me when I offered her our literature that could help with all kinds of resources for moms who are struggling. Usually, moms who aborted either flip us the middle finger, or are sobbing. Some ignore us altogether, and we are never certain of their choice. The smiling ones who are pleasant to us are probably ones who have chosen life, but we won’t know till we get to heaven. There were nineteen women there to abort their kids yesterday, so if two did choose life, then ten percent of the babies doomed to die were saved yesterday. Praise God for those two...despair for the other seventeen. Any way about it, it was worth standing in the cold, not because of the numbers of lives saved, but because God has commanded us to be there as a voice to the voiceless, a defense for the defenseless, a harbinger of strength to the weak.

Jeremiah 22:3 Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. 

If we know the good we are to do and do not do it, we are not being all that God has called us to be.

This is not an easy lesson, but there is no doubt that it is what God asks of us.

God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?  Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. ... Psalm 82:1-8

Moving on to less convicting issues...

Regarding the heated coat and heated gloves. This was the coldest day thus far, probably in the high twenties. That is not as cold as it will get. My heated apparel was not bad. I was not freezing for sure. My fingertips did not go numb as they usually do. However, I was not toasty warm either. Finally, I put my warmest down coat which was waiting in the car JUST IN CASE over my heated jacket and then my body was warm. I looked like the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man. That was at the three hour mark of standing in the cold, at which point, the glove batteries had reached their limit and were done for the day of heating. My hands were cold from that point on. (I was numb for another hour...3 hour battery life is one hour too short...I am usually there at least four hours.)

Standing on the sidewalks and enduring the slings and arrows of the enemy of our souls is not easy in the best of circumstances. In the bitter cold, it is even less easy. However, there is no place I feel the pleasure of God more completely. His pleasure seems to be adversely related at times to the ease and comfort of my circumstances. I am not saying that God does not wish to bless us with joy and happiness, but I do not believe that is where we are meant to dwell. I believe it is a place of rest and strengthening for our real work. Self-pampering is not our job here on earth. I feel pretty certain of that.

Speaking of our job here on earth....

One couple pulled out of the abortion center lot and rolled down their car window. The driver, a man, said to my counselor friend Chrissy, “Don’t you have a job?”

“This IS our job,” I answered.

Chrissy offered him our information telling him the somber woman sitting next to him might need it.

“God bless,” he said, in a mocking voice. He refused the literature and drove away.

I am not sure four heated coats piled on him could thaw his heart towards God and truth, but you just never know how or whom God will reach. So we pile on the layers and my team and I head out with the warmth of the Son which lasts way more than three hours.

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