This baby showed up on the sidewalks of the abortion center with her dad yesterday. They came to pray. I didn’t know them, but after our Cities4Life team’s first hectic half hour of speaking to all the abortion-minded moms as they streamed into the clinic, I paused to introduce myself. The young man had joined the prior weekend’s prayer walk along the clinic street with Lovelife Charlotte He was so convicted by what he had seen that he decided on one of his days off each week, he would like to come and pray. In fact, as I talked with him, he decided he would like to volunteer with our ministry, Cities4Life.
Two women chose life yesterday. The tipping point for those two could well have been the sight of a devoted father who clearly loved his adorable baby. You never know what God might use to persuade someone to return to the right path when they are stumbling to destruction. I know it is not our eloquence. Certainly not mine anyway. Most of us are quiet, gentle, even shy Christians who love God and stand on the sidewalk because abortion is brutally wrong and babies are being slaughtered in our city by the dozens each day. We feel a burden for those babies but also a desire to obey God in defending the vulnerable who cannot defend themselves.
Our eloquence may not change hearts, but sometimes our presence does.
I remember when I was a young adult and going through a particularly difficult time, I rode my bike to an art gallery. I sat in the garden of the gallery feeling hopeless. I didn’t know God then, so I wasn’t exactly praying but I was musing over my life and wondering how I had stumbled so far astray. A gentleman sat down next to me on the bench. I had never met him, but he acted as though he knew exactly what I was thinking. He told me that sometimes the world was overwhelming but that I should not fret. It would be ok, and I would be okay. He said it with such assurance that I believed him. Then he left.
I have never forgotten that encounter. The few words of a stranger encouraging me when he didn’t even know my story gave me strength. Maybe he was an angel. The Bible says we will “entertain angels unawares.” Whoever he was, it was a ten-second encounter with a person I didn’t know that gave me hope to keep struggling to do right, and it would be all right in the end.
Sometimes all we have is fifteen seconds to speak to the women as they enter the clinic. With God, sometimes that is enough. Our mere presence speaks volumes that will perhaps echo in their soul long after the sidewalk empties.
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Acts 16:14
One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.
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