Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Sat, 23 Jan 1993 05:04:32 -0500
From:         Kerry Stephenson <KSTE@PURCCVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Reflections of One Long Absent

Good Evening:

I don't know whether this will violate current rules of the list; I have
been gone a while.  Suffice to say that this post deals with abortion,
and that those who do not wish to hear should stop reading now.  I just
feel a need to speak in a forum in which I know there will be a few
who will understand.

My heart is heavy this night, and my spirit dimmed.  Twenty years ago,
a national ethic of convenience was conceived, and today (yesterday,
actually) we have seen the official birth of a nation that turns its
face from those most defenseless, most innocent.

Those of my persuasion who smelled victory in the air not quite a
year ago, when there seemed a hope of changing the terms of the abortion
debate, gag now on the stench of tiny mangled corpses yet to be in this
beginning age of blood and tears.

Mother Teresa once said, "There is nothing left of a society in which a
mother seeks to murder her own child."  Perhaps she was right.  Surely
there is no barrier left beyond which one may not go for the sake of
personal convenience.  Ahead of us, just around the corner, court-
ordered Norplant prepares to move into the public schools, and
Dr. Jack Kervorkian fires up his infernal machine for those who have
outlived their usefulness.  We are told in every quarter that there
is nothing left to argue about, and nothing to be done.

My dearest friends, I wept this day, for those who now will never be,
for those who will add to the numbers already dispatched.  It hardly
seems possible that we may accelerate the numbers, over the top well
beyond 1.5 million per year.  It seems insane that we rush eagerly
to eliminate more than one in three in the years to come.  Yet
the keening wail of "change," the howling wind of death, sweeps
through the halls of the house of God.

Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind.  So it says--and yet it seems so
unfair that those who are harvested (an appropriate word, when we
think of fetal tissue research) are only the victims of those who sow.

You'll have to excuse me, I suppose.  I've been reading the minor
prophets--though I think in their words they are far more than "minor."
I would recommend them to all, for their observations are timeless,
and the stories they tell are equally compelling to every generation.
And yet, though the day of the Lord is a day of wrath, anger, blood,
and sorrow, there is always the Promise and the hope.

And, so, believe it or not, I have a word of hope in this dark night
for us all.  Though I look upon the future with trepidation, my thoughts
return to the progress made and lives saved.  I know there is one life
that came into this world before the darkness came, one child born last
year that owes his young life to the efforts of Operation Rescue in
Buffalo.  There may well be (and I believe and hope there are) more than
this one.

But this one I know, because his mother is a friend of mine.  And because
of the public protests of people I came to know, her baby is alive.  For
that one child, the Enemy has been confounded.  And we who stand at the
abyss of an uncertain future must remember that one life is more precious
than all the time in the world.  That one life is stronger and deeper and
more significant than any law or any government.  That Jesus died for that
one life's eternal soul.

And so, dearest friends, fellow mourners at the funeral of the soul of
a once-great nation, remember that one life.  Stand fast in the day of
judgment.  And when the jackals of convenience smack their lips on the last
of the unprotected and turn to seek another prey, stand strong in the Spirit,
that the blood of the lamb and the Word of your testimony will overcome,
though perhaps not in this present world.

It is an unpopular path the Savior calls us to.  Few can stand, and
fewer still can walk the narrow way.  But fear not, for He is greater
than the world and has overcome it.  Be of good courage, to love what He
loves and hate what He hates, though the world and the people thereof
come against you with bitterness and with gall and with fire and
persecution.  Your reward is in another realm, in another time.  If we
shall but follow, forsaking all else and clinging only to that blessed
hope, He will be faithful and true, and you will hear those precious
words, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

Grace and peace to you.

Love,
     --Kerry (KSTE@PURCCVM, still no-mail on the list)
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