It’s taken me all day to work up the courage to write this Day 17 post for 31 Days. I’ll not call it a “God-Spot” because it’s so much more than a momentary sighting. It’s about God showing us how to stand when it really matters.

 

I didn’t plan on meeting a well-known apologist at dinner. Who would expect to be eating chicken and green beans on a Thursday night with an author and host of national radio and television programs?

If I’d known what was to come at the end of the evening, I’m not sure I’d have stuck around.

A local agency with a ministry to women in unplanned pregnancies held its annual fund-raising event in our community last night. I attended because I believe in and support their work and because this agency is often assisting the same clients as the domestic violence agency where I am a volunteer.

While the keynote speaker, Dr. Frank Turek, chatted with the pastor sitting next to him, I eaves-dropped. Their conversation was fascinating. I wanted to know more. Our program guide for the evening said Turek “impacts young and old alike at colleges, high schools and churches with hard-hitting yet entertaining evidence for Christianity.”

I personally have all the evidence I need, but I know that “3 out of 4 Christian youth leave the church while in college, many because they are intellectually skeptical.” I know because it’s hit our family.

I wanted to corner Dr. Turek and throw all my questions, fears and doubts at him. I wanted answers that would stand up to scrutiny. The sooner the better. Instead, I kindly asked him to pass the butter and inquired as to what channels carried his radio and television programs.

Dr. Turek’s presentation was powerful. He deftly addressed questions and statements used by unbelievers and skeptics to challenge Christianity with responses designed to set them on their heels. Included in his presentation was this thought-provoking quote:

Dr. Turek left us feeling empowered and affirmed in our beliefs, and he gave me hope that I can speak with sense and conviction the next time I have the opportunity. His book “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” is already loaded on my Kindle. While God has given me a peace about where our skeptic is headed, I needed this man’s words on this night.

Then Dr. Turek turned to the subject at hand — choices that await a woman who finds herself with a pregnancy she didn’t plan, maybe doesn’t want. It’s a reality that has also touched our family. Someone dear to me faced those decisions over 20 years ago. She chose life, but in her circumstance, she could have just as easily chosen to end the pregnancy.

The latest statistics available (2011) show abortions are on the decline — down from 1.21 million in 2008 to 1.06 million in 2011 (www.abort73.com).

Dr. Turek tied pregnancy decisions to morality and faith. In a world where everything is relative and anything is acceptable, where my truth doesn’t have to be your truth and where we’re told we can do whatever we want with our bodies, I fear the decline is temporary. I will not be surprised if at the end of the year, we find the abortion rate has begun to climb.

Then came the part I wish I had missed. Dr. Turek closed his presentation with a brief, painfully graphic video showing the aftermath of abortion.

Images of unborn children whose lives were ended in the womb played across the screen.

Children who did not get to choose, who carried all the DNA their tiny bodies would ever hold at the moment of their conception.

I could avert my eyes, but not my heart. These were images I didn’t expect to see, but they are the truth that all women facing this life-altering decision need to hold. The vivid truth we need to be prepared to share.

“This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.” Jeremiah 22:3

 

 

 

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