Be the Change You Want to See

by | Dec 17, 2012 | Uncategorized | 1 comment

After a weekend of thinking about, crying over and shaking my head in disbelief about the events in Connecticut on Friday, I have been burdened with a thought that will not seem to go away.  I was challenged by our youth pastor’s Facebook post Friday: “So we’ve reached a point where people open fire on elementary school students? THIS WORLD NEEDS JESUS. Speak up church!!!!!!!!!!!!”  Speak up church?  You mean we should probably be doing something about this? Great challenge, but what? 
I’m not sure why but in the conversations that have surfaced about mental health, gun control and public safety in the past few days since the CT shooting I recalled a quote from Mother Teresa:
“But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child – a direct killing of the innocent child – murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?” 
Mother Teresa’s quote here is not about judging the woman who has an abortion; her quote is about judging a society that legalizes mother’s killing their own children but are appalled when someone else does it. 
I have never been vocal about abortion or the sanctity of life.  I have never made a controversial post on my blog.  Frankly, I don’t want to even post this blog but I have felt burdened all weekend to share this message and “speak up.”  The more I thought about Mother Teresa’s words the more I have wondered why it is legal and acceptable for more than 3,000 babies to be legally aborted daily in the United States yet we are devastated when 20 children are killed at the hands of a crazy man. Obviously neither is acceptable and both are deplorable but we may have some control and some voice about the murders of those unborn babies. And positively impacting the daily number of abortions (roughly the number of lives taken in the World Trade Center attacks) may also positively affect the culture, climate and unspoken norms of our society when it comes to the value of life in general.  I am not contesting the fact that there will always be people who are clinically ill and will kill regardless, but the number of violent crimes has escalated beyond the percentage of individuals who historically and statistically should fall under a clinical diagnosis of insanity, psychosis, and the like. 
Speak up church.., Are you sick and tired of stories like the one on Friday that keep getting darker, more evil and more frightening?  Are you willing to be the change you want to see?  I don’t even know why I posted this today (Lord knows I didn’t want to) but this blog has been read almost 3,000 times in 6 months; maybe God is prompting one of you to be an agent of change for the sanctity of life.  We have to prayerfully do something and start somewhere and I believe regardless of the impact our actions may seem to make or fail to make, we are called to be obedient to our loving, peace filled and benevolent God to make change in lieu of this weekend’s evil.

1 Comment

  1. Carla Schreiner on December 18, 2012 at 10:38 pm

    Excellent post, Laura- keep it up!!
    Carla Schreiner

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