I’ve learned an excellent way to love is loving the things that other people love. I think of Christ and his admonition to Peter to feed His sheep. Peter, grieved by the thrice repeated question of his love for Christ, misunderstood the point (John 21:15-19). For Christ, to love Him is to love the very things He loves.
I hope to love like Christ does. I cannot pretend to have gotten close, but as I attempt, there are particular causes that have become near to my heart. One of them is not a popular cause of advocacy in my city (or elsewhere for that matter), but one that makes me weep and say this is a grievous thing to which I must respond.
The cause I speak of is that for the unborn child. That God holds human life in the highest regard is apparent throughout Scripture, from the very creation of man in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). It is inconsistent to say that a life in the womb is anything less than human. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13) We celebrate this week leading to Easter that Christ was the one who died to give us life. What more powerful act do we need to realize that God loves humanity?
I have stood alongside good friends who have steadied their faith through difficult and also lost pregnancies. I am confident not one of them would say that they felt anything less than love for that unborn child. Early in my teaching career, a student approached me with vague tears, and I uncovered that the root of her tears was an aborted pregnancy. Her grief was inconsolable, and I realized abortion could never be the idealized solution of its advocates. When I lived overseas and my language was good enough to recognize that they were playing abortion commercials on the bus, my heart broke over the mechanized, routine taking of human life. There are over 13 million abortions annually in that country alone.
What breaks your heart? Is it something that also breaks the heart of Christ?
Life as He Reveals 