A word spoken at 12th and Locust

Jill and I take the 8 to 9 a.m. shift Monday mornings for the 40 Days for Life, an international mobilization of pro-lifers, mainly Catholics, taking turns praying and engaging at the very gates of hell: Planned Parenthood. If that’s a little too dramatic for you, consider that at the particular location where we were stationed at 12th and Locust in Philadelphia, more than 5,000 babies were terminated in 2014.

It is never fun to keep this sidewalk vigil, not only for knowing what goes on just yards away beyond the falsely serene courtyard of the facility, but also because the women walking in and out (even at 8 o’clock on a chilly October morning) are not particularly friendly. My hunch is that someone inside the building has coached staff and visitors to steadfastly avoid interaction with the likes of us “bigots.” For the faces look straight ahead and not at us as they slip through the wrought iron portals, where Jill and I appeal to young women who walk as in a trance, like sheep to the slaughter. The hook is birth control. The hope is that they will return by and by for an abortion.

But I was thinking, of course they won’t talk to us. How could they? Consider what we are asking them. We are asking them to give up everything. Not just something (like a baby), but everything.

Even as a Christian, I have been asked by God to give up everything. One forgets this. One hopes the Holy Spirit, that alien new tenant of the redeemed heart, will simply want to change the draperies. But instead He comes with a wrecking ball. Walls of self-centeredness must go. Managing relationships must go. Reliance on one’s wits must go.

It is never an isolated thing the Lord has us surrender when He says to follow Him. The rich young man (Mark 10, Matthew 19) knew what others in the crowd may not have realized—that Jesus’ call to sell his goods, give to the poor, and follow Him, would not be just one corner of his life but the whole of it.

Back at 12th and Locust, Jill asks a 17-year-old to not terminate her baby, and not choose the birth control route to sustain an immoral lifestyle. But the teen is well aware that to forfeit the birth control is to forfeit her boyfriend, and to forfeit her boyfriend is to forfeit her life, as she conceives of it. How can we expect this transaction to be consented to in such a short time, in a five-minute conversation?

As the Apostle Paul said in his defense to King Agrippa in Caesarea, when the monarch asked Paul if he thought he could persuade him in such a short time to be converted:

“Short time or long—I pray to God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains” (Acts 26:29).

We pray like Paul then—that whether in a short time or a long time, a word spoken on a Monday morning at 12th and Locust can become for some unsuspecting woman the first stop on a long journey out of darkness into light.