I was blessed to spend five days at the end of January on a
trip to Washington, D.C.
On the Friday I was there, I marched for Life.
On the Saturday, I went to the museums and the memorials in
the city.
As I was looking at all of these amazing people, men and
women, who gave their lives to creating this country, I couldn't help but
wonder if they'd be disappointed with it today.
These people, whom we as a country honor in memorials and statues and museums
dedicated their entire lives to a fight for freedom. But that's not really what
we're living. I like to believe that the
country and the freedom that they envisioned was one of possibility and
dreaming. They wanted the people of this fantastic nation to be able to be free
to do whatever they could possibly imagine; to reach their highest potential.
But what we've become is the opposite. Largely, we are treating liberty as
freedom from responsibility. We are using the freedom to choose to live our
lives as we please as an excuse to eat whatever we want, complain about
whatever we want, and have sex without consequences. There is no liberty, nor
justice, in the killing of an unborn child. When our forefathers spoke of
"Liberty and justice for all" there was no footnote that said
"Unless they aren't born" or "Unless they were conceived in
rape". The right to protest was
meant to change things for the better - not to give women the right to murder
their own children within their own wombs completely free of any (legal) remorse
or recoil.
Free will has become something that makes people feel that
they are somehow entitled to treat one another however they please without
recompense. Free will isn't meant to allow us to be forgiven of our mistakes,
it is meant to give us the brain power and will power to stand up and correct
them. We have to own up to the things we
are doing wrong, as individuals and as a functioning nation. The minute we
start looking out for only ourselves is the moment when we as a country will
unravel.
We should fight for what we believe in. We should stand up
for things and peacefully protest. But we need to do it for what it right. Can
we really afford to have on our consciences living in a country where our leader says:
"Can we honestly say that we're doing enough to keep our children - all of them - safe from harm? I've been reflecting on this the past few days and if we're honest with ourselves, the answer is no. . . . If there’s even one step we can take to save a child, then surely we have an obligation to try. . . Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”*
but does nothing about the 55 million babies killed in the
last 40 years since Roe v. Wade passed, and do nothing about it ourselves?
Please don't misread this as anything less than a total respect and love for this country. The United States is such a beautiful place, and it really is full of possibility. I thank God every day that I live here and have the opportunities that are offered to all of us here, but that doesn't change the fact that I truly believe that being a United States citizen
means more than what we're living it out to be. And the fantastic thing is, because of our liberty, we can change this. We can make it so that every life is protected at every stage.
These are just some starting reflections and musings, but my heart has been shaken, moved, and inspired to be more active in the preservation of life from conception to natural death.
*http://www.npr.org/2012/12/16/167412995/transcript-president-obama-at-sandy-hook-prayer-vigil
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