Browsing Tag

March for Life

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Digging Deep Field Trip to March for Life!

Posted on October 8, 2020

Did you see that fly on the head of Vice President Mike Pence last night? (Glenn did get up and swat the screen.) Whether he was a spy-fly, a MAGA fly, a virus carrier or just a swat-able pest, he will never know what an international moment of fame he claimed for those two minutes. During arguably the most intense portion of the debate, he just came in for his landing, enjoyed his up-close and personal observation deck, and then gracefully exited that tense arena. Perhaps others in those plexiglass containers, at the moment, would have loved to have so gracefully exited. 

In every single debate, particularly in light of the expected confirmation of Judge Barrett to the Supreme Court, there will be a discussion about the expected viability of Roe Vs. Wade. There’s light for America’s unborn at the end of a very dark tunnel. I’m praying hard for a path to that light. 

The March for Life in Washington DC this year occurs on Friday January 29 . You can read about it here: https://marchforlife.org.  I’m hoping (and planning) to have a group of Diggers there this year. We’ll be studying from the decalog (and other relevant scriptures) the words “Thou shalt not kill” at that time. I hope many of you will be able to walk from the mall area to the White House with our little group this year. 

We’ve reserved several rooms at the Westin in Olde Town Alexandria, VA, where we will have easy access to the metro which will deliver us right to the spot where the historic March for Life begins. If you are willing to stay in a room with three others, the cost for lodging for the night prior to the March and the night following the March (January 28th checkin to January 30th check-out) is approximately one hundred dollars per person–two nights included in that approximate price.  (No profit is being made in this endeavor at all. The cost of the room split four ways is what you will pay. I think there is a parking fee per night, in addition, if you are bringing a car to the hotel.) On the evening prior to the March, we will meet together at some spot for a dutch-treat dinner and then later in the hotel, for a Digging Deep time of prayer and devotional. Of course, if you want to work out your own lodging in the area and then meet us for dinner and the March, you’re welcome to do that. I think it will be a rich time together for a cause that’s very study-relevant (and precious to all of us.) Some of us may be flying into DC, so maybe we can coordinate travel from airport to hotel and back for return flights. 

Details will come together and I will keep you posted. I understand that there is a slight possibility that we cannot do this, because of COVID. But, for now, we are pressing forward. The March is pressing forward. So be thinking. Let me know if you want to join us  by corresponding on the Digging Deep for Encouragement wall, by private messaging me or by emailing me at byhcontest@gmail.com. I’ll give you an exact total closer to time. I’ll need deposits of fifty dollars by January 10th, so we can know, for sure, how many rooms to retain.

It’s a big thing to do. We’ll have to get out our big shovels. =). Last year I did this trip with four of my West Huntsville sisters and we all agreed it was a trip we definitely wanted to repeat. I hope some of you will be blessed by joining us as we become, in yet another way, a part of a statement that needs to be shouted in every venue at every opportunity by people of God.

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

March for Life: Six Take-aways

Posted on January 27, 2020

 

  1. Encouragement. It was the large numbers of millennials and iGens that thrilled my soul. Thousands of “Students for Life” signs and school groups with matching toboggans were everywhere you looked. There were thousands upon thousands of these thirty-five-and-under adults and teens.  The children of these people may ultimately carry the name “Generation Life.” I pray they do. 
  2. Urgency. The Catholic church was, by far, the most represented body at the March, There are lots of things to do besides march, of course, but I’m praying that our Lord’s church can/will be a more motivated and active protective group for life in the womb. Every voice of every Christian should be saying something, in some forum, for life.
  3. Sadness. Of course there were images of the unborn. Some very large images, along the sidelines of the march, showed the bloody and fully recognizable mutilated babies. Those images are easily seared into the mind. However, looking at those, I felt a great degree of sadness about other babies who are quite ignored, even at events such as this one. I’m speaking of those chemical abortions that occur with pills such as RU-486 on the day of (or a few days after) conception. And I’m speaking about those babies who are left in freezers, to simply remain there indefinitely (or expire and be trashed) following in-vitro procedures. These largely overlooked and uncounted babies are not even included, generally, in the 60 million, that we at least hear about, from organizations like NRLC. There are no flags or crosses displayed for them. They are disposable children who “don’t even count” to the majority of pro-lifers. I find that incredibly sad. 
  4. Motivation. One can hardly attend an event like the March for Life without wanting to do more for the unborn. I came home wanting to do more, say more, and influence more for the babies who are paying the ultimate earthly price for the national sin of abortion.  Immediately, I checked to be sure my representative had signed the Born Alive Protection Act petition. This document is a list of those who, in oversimplified terms, want to insure that every baby born alive as a result of a botched abortion receives medical care in an effort to preserve the already born baby’s life. In other words, this bill, which has been blocked for debate over 75 times by House democrats, would prohibit just killing and trashing a living infant. Could any thinking person tell me why any cognizant representative would defend infanticide? But they are doing it on the hill everyday. Thus, the immediate challenge is to contact your congressman and either thank him for signing the petition for the Born Alive Act or to beg him/her to do so. You can find information and a list of those who have signed here: https://www.republicanwhip.gov (And thanks, Representative Mo Brooks, for signing early on.)
  5. Appreciation. I’m thankful for voices that are powerfully protective of life in our nation at this moment in time. It was a historic moment when our President, for the first time in history, decided to attend and speak at the March. I cannot endorse everything the president says, but I appreciate the strong words he said in behalf of the babies. They were direct and profoundly simple. I’m thankful to him for his powerful pro-life voice. I’m thankful for voices like that of Steve Scalise, who is the strong arm for the Born Alive Act. I’m thankful for the work of Jeanne Mancini and others who organize the March and are tireless in their efforts for the unborn on a national level through the year. I’m acutely grateful to live in a country in which I can find myself in the middle of tens of thousands of people on the national mall making a statement of conscience about a principle of righteousness. Though the principle (of the  Biblical sanctity of life) has been trodden underfoot, it’s still an extreme manifestation of liberty that we can march en masse from the Washington monument to the Supreme Court with our message without fear of persecution and with the protection of our government. May we never take the liberty for granted and further, may we feel a personal responsibility to speak, at every turn, our faith—beginning with taking the gospel to others at every opportunity. The gospel is the answer to every societal malady.
  6. Outrage. The lack of logic on the posters of the few who showed up in support of the pro-choice movement was just that—outrageous: “Pro-Life Hypocrites…Didn’t see ya’ at the March for Climate Control?”  Seriously?….Could there be any conscience-driven person who could, in any universe, equate the hypothesis that man can significantly influence the weather with the historical fact of man’s destructive influence through the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973? That’s outrageous.To propose that these two concerns are on the same plane of urgency is absurdity. 

Finally, this is not exactly a take-away, because I’ve shared this treasure for a lifetime. I took this precious gift with me and brought it back home: the gift of fellowship with sisters. Twenty-four hours in the car and ten miles walking around Capitol Hill with a focus of protecting unborn life has a way of bringing sisters together like no regular fellowship meal (though we’re all about them, too) probably ever will. Our conversations, prayers, shared spaces and debacles were all catalysts for memories and for a hope to do it again with more sisters. So thanks, Lindsey Van Hook, for the idea of the trek (and the vendor pretzels at 4 pm after skipping most of breakfast and all of lunch…It’s hard to decide for which of those I was most thankful.) We’re all most thankful to God for constant provision and protection. 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Guest Writer: Isabella Mason on Abortion and Forgiveness (and President Trump at the March!)

Posted on January 23, 2020

As you read, four sisters from West Huntsville and I will be driving to Washington, DC to participate in the March for Life, hosted by the National Right to Life, on Friday. Neither of the five of us have ever been and we are all excited for the fellowship and the continued clarity and focus of the cause. I hope you’ll be praying that the combined voices of thousands will be heard by our legislators in behalf of those who are not given a voice. Sometimes when I step back and look at what’s happened over the past 37 years—the millions of lives taken, the deceit in rhetoric that promotes this murder, and the amazing laissez-faire attitude that even those who wear the name “Christian” can often have about the massacre—I am stunned. How can we see, in the recesses of a mother’s womb, the life that is genetically complete, watch it’s tiny limbs moving, and hear the beat of its heart…and then intentionally rip, or tear, or poison or suffocate that life and somehow think that’s something other than cold-blooded murder? Why are Christians often complacent about this unbelievable atrocity? 

Even as I’m preparing to publish this post, President Trump has posted that he will be present at the event and that he will speak to this large assembly of pro-life advocates. This will be a historic moment. He  will be the first president to ever be present at the March for Life which has been occurring since 1974. I’m excited to witness this Presidential support of the agenda of NRLC and pro-life legislation. We cannot become anesthetized to the horror of abortion just because it’s been routinely occurring for the past 37 years. The devil would love for the people of God to be able to “look the other way” and just not think about the daily and deliberate taking of thousands of innocent lives right in our own country.

I love to encourage young writers. Today, I hope you’ll read from the talented and convicted Isabella Mason, of Hot Springs Village, Arkansas. Isabella is 16. Though you’ll see she’s taken some literary license (writers get to take artistic license) with what a pre-born baby can think, her philosophy is spot on. I know you cannot enjoy what she’s written because of its subject matter, but I hope you will be moved by it and appreciative of it.  

                                                                     My Short Time on Earth

This is a story about me. I don’t have a name because no one bothered to give me one. It all started when my mommy met this guy. He told her he would never let her down, but when she told him she was pregnant with me,  he left, never to be seen again. Therefore, I know nothing about my father. But my mommy? I know her. You see, my life began at conception, so I’m part mom and part dad. After that I began to grow fast in my mommy’s tummy. By the third week I already had a digestive tube and a neural plate. Also, my blood vessels began to form and my tiny heart started beating. In my fourth week my tiny limbs started forming and the organs in my respiratory system began taking shape. In the fifth week I even got kidneys. I had a cartilage skeleton and a stomach making digestive juices by the end of the sixth week, and my brain had developed so much that it could send impulses to control my body functions. Next my nervous system started responding to touch in the seventh week. By the eighth week my heart looked exactly like any adult’s, only much tinier, of course. My cartilage skeleton began to be replaced by bone through a process called ossification. Now I obviously and distinctly looked like a tiny human being! Starting in week nine I was growing at super speed. And by the tenth week I had a fully operational urinary system. By the end of the twelfth week I even had muscles! But while I was busy inside mommy’s tummy living and growing, things on the outside weren’t so great.

      You see, at the time I didn’t know, but my mommy didn’t want me. She wasn’t ready for me to “invade” HER life. That’s why the thought came across to end MY life. She didn’t even consider at least putting me up for adoption, or even keeping me! People told her that an abortion would make this mistake go away, but all it did was make me go away. They convinced her to at least visit an abortion clinic, and for some reason she took their advice. The “doctor” (I thought doctors saved lives; not destroyed them…) told her that it would be a harmless procedure. My mommy was feeling guilty about it though and wasn’t sure she would go through with it. But the “doctor” convinced her that all I was, was “a piece of tissue”. (which wasn’t true!) Sadly, the “date” was set when the dirty deed would be done.

      I was twenty weeks, only two away from the second trimester. I was growing so fast that it wouldn’t be long before I saw my mommy! I would get to bust out of there and finally see the world! I would get to hear my mommy’s clear, gentle voice; and see her beautiful face! But something happened… something terrible… something I thought that my mommy would never do.

      Now I have to tell you about the day I was killed. Mommy went in and the doctor conducted a method called “salt poisoning” (doesn’t sound very harmless, huh?). A salt solution was injected into the amniotic fluid in the sac that surrounded me. It was poisoning me. I was thrashing with indescribable pain that I never thought I’d feel. I was slowly dying all alone. Within an hour and a half, that tiny heart I was telling you about… it wasn’t beating anymore. My life was gone, put out with about as much thought as one blows out a candle. Obviously I didn’t know it (because I was dead), but mommy birthed my dead body within about three days. But that body didn’t scream for mommy, or gasp for breath, or even utter a small cry. My old body was still and lifeless. 

      Like I said though, there was no life in my physical body. But when I opened my eyes next, it was like I was reborn (or, you know, actually born, since I didn’t make it that far on earth). I wasn’t in pain anymore. I couldn’t even feel sad about my mommy and dad not wanting me. It was an inexplicable peace. Then I saw Him. He was my TRUE Father. The One who had always loved me and wanted me when no one else did. He had been with me while I was in my mommy’s tummy growing and developing into a child… His child. He was with me in the dark when I thought that I was dying all alone. I belonged to Him! 

      I looked around and you wouldn’t have believed what I saw. I saw children like me who had been aborted and children that had been sacrificed to pagan gods by their parents. There were so many I could never count. I realized that many people had given their precious children up to death, and here I found them.

       LOVE. Love of parents, love of family, and love of a friend or spouse… I never felt in my short time on earth. But this… this love… God’s love… it was the love He wanted my mommy and dad and family to give me. It’s a shame I was never given a chance. But I spent my time in paradise….It was wonderful! And God gave me a whole eternity!

      And now I get to tell you about a great day, a terrible day, the happiest day for some, and the saddest day for others. It’s called the Judgment Day. When it came around all had to answer for the things they did. Sadly, some did not have the blood of Christ to wash their sins away so that God could see their sins no more and receive them into Heaven. I saw my mommy for the last time that Day. God asked her why she made the decision to abort me. I will recount to you her reply… “Oh, Lord, I was scared. I was selfish. I cared only about my own life and not the life of my child. After I birthed my child’s lifeless body, I went home and cried and cried until I was sick with grief. The guilt overcame me. But when I realized what I had done, it was too late. My child was gone forever… because of me. And I have rejected You too, my Creator.”

My mommy had never known God on earth. I wish she would have. We could have made up for the years we lost on earth. If only she would have listened to the Christian that tried in vain to show her the Way. If only she would have believed in the Lord, and that he died for her sins. If only she would have repented of the sin she committed… the Lord would have forgiven her! If only she would have confessed that Jesus was the Son of God. If only she would have been saved by the washing away of her sin though baptism and lived the rest of her life for God! But this, she did not do, though I wish she would have. Then I could have felt her love as she hugged me for the first time. 

                                       By: Isabella Mason

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Some Post-March-for-Life Thoughts

Posted on January 21, 2019

Seeing images of the March for Life this weekend renews hope for the fate of the unborn in a society that’s been okay with taking pre-born life now for the past four-plus decades. Watching our Vice President address this crowd of pro-lifers and make very strong statements in behalf of those babies is heartening. Do we dare to hope that Roe vs. Wade could be overturned in our lifetimes? Yes…Let’s!

Let’s hope in the God Who is hearing the cries of those little ones; cries which are silent screams to us, but are heard by the ears of the Almighty (Ex.22:22-24). Let’s hope in the new Supreme Court members, for whom we prayed; that they will be bold and judicious with an honest accounting to the science of pre-born life and a conscience about their individual responsibilities to stand for justice. Let’s hope that the pro-life voices that hold sway currently in our government will be voices of wisdom and boldness. Let’s hope and pray for individual state elections, amendments and proposals that can bring us closer to a day when convenience abortion will be a darkness of the past. 

If there are those Christians reading who are tempted to make the old argument that, in case of a Roe v. Wade reversal, there will be just as many illegal abortions as there are legal ones today, please don’t. The idea that abortion would not be curbed by its legal banning is not rational thought. Besides, even if that were the case, righteous people should rejoice in the justice of a governmental defense of life and in the fact that murder would have to be committed in secret rather than with the sanction of our government and the celebration of the mainstream media.

If there are those Christians reading who are tempted to argue that the reversal of Roe v. Wade would accomplish little since it would merely send the decision back to the states, please don’t. Many states, including my home state, would criminalize the murder immediately. More states banning abortion means more lives saved. That’s an obvious truth.

If there are those who  are tempted to argue for the practicality of ending the pregnancy (i.e. murdering the child) rather than ushering the child into a life of poverty and struggle, please consider the following:

My son taught an ethics class at the University of South Carolina while working on his doctorate. In that class, one of the topics they discussed was the morality of convenience abortion. Of course, my son had to be careful in a state university to be uncompromising in his own adherence to the Word of God, while complying with governmental regulations about exactly how much he could say from a religious standpoint in that arena. 

Students inevitably would make many pro-choice arguments.  Someone would always raise her hand and suggest that a baby born in extreme poverty to a single and uneducated parent—a parent who could not possibly provide the things that children “need”—would be better off to be aborted than to have to face the kind of struggle and deprivation that would follow birth. 

My son said that there were many things he always wanted to say when that argument surfaced in the classroom. He wanted to point out that the circumstances into which a child would be born had absolutely no impact on whether or not abortion is murder. He wanted to talk about the responsibility, regardless of circumstances, that comes with choices made about sexuality. He wanted to say that there are many thriving adults who were born in poverty and/or to single parents or who struggled with all sorts of maladies, including extreme poverty, as children. 

But he never had to make that last argument. Inevitably, some other student in the room would raise his hand and say, “But I am that person. I was born to a single mother in a very bad part of the city in which I grew up. I am the child who never had a father and sometimes did not have enough to eat. I am that child who faced incredible odds….I was not always glad that those were my circumstances, but I am glad that I was born. I have had a lot to overcome, but I am here in this college classroom. Further, though things were hard, I would even suggest that I am a better person because of the struggle I’ve had to encounter and the difficult passages I had to navigate.” 

My son did not have to state the argument. The evidence was always right there in the room. In fact, it’s never very far from each one of us.  

May we examine it…and hope.