Bryan Kemper shares
an invigorating blogpost about the ProLife Day of Silent Solidarity, which took place this past Tuesday. Here's an excerpt:
This year as I was reading the reports starting to come in and looking at the pictures, I was intrigued by some of the trends I was seeing. The first thing I noticed was how many pregnant girls were writing in about participating in this year’s event. Of course, I am not celebrating teen pregnancy, but I was thrilled to hear them talk about why they chose life for their child and chose to be a voice for others.
Some wrote about how someone first talked to them about life and convinced them to keep their child. They knew that their choice for life was important and that they must take a stand for other young girls who are facing teen pregnancy. They were so passionate about being moms and the choice they made and they wanted to share that joy and passion with this generation.
Another thing that struck me this year was how many first-time participants we had who were taking on this day alone. I read about how nervous they were as they walked into school not knowing if anyone else would be taking the vow of silence or how their friends would react to their stand.
Many of these kids faced some heavy persecution from both their peers and school faculty as they went through the day. Students told me about dirty looks, rude comments, eye rolls and outright harassment — and this was from teachers. They talked about how other students would make comments about how they should have been aborted or how stupid pro-life was, but no matter what they faced they took a stand and shined a light in their schools.
While there were stories of harassment there were also many stories of solidarity and support from unexpected places. One student told me about how one of the most popular boys in school read her flyer and then joined her for rest of the day. Others talked about how they brought a whole roll of duct tape to school and by the end of the day it was depleted from the number of kids who joined them.
This dovetails nicely with today's devotional:
Therefore, His love for us is greater than His love for a plant, an
animal, or any other created thing.
And the book of Jonah tells us that He loves even the
most sinful people and seeks to bring them into His
merciful arms. And it's a love that seeks to touch
all of his created children: that desperate teenager,
the baby growing in her womb, even tyrants and
terrorists.
So it's up to us to imitate God's merciful love by
helping and praying for those who persecute us, and
those who don't love us back.
