An Open Letter to Pro-Life Activists

Dear Pro-Life Activists:

photo-41Don’t give up. We need you. You are not alone. I know how disillusioned you must feel sometimes. Stories about Planned Parenthood selling aborted baby parts are just the latest in a long assault against life. It’s disheartening, I know. You’re angry that the story is only receiving minimal attention (and from mostly conservative sources) while social media is abuzz over what Caitlyn Jenner wore to the ESPY awards. But your frustration isn’t in vain. The culture can still wake up. Knowledge can still do its work. People can still change.

You must be looking at your signs in the back of your car, with dog-eared corners and sun-bleached lettering. And you wonder how long you’ll have to keep doing this. Is it worth it? Looking into the vacant, disinterested or angry eyes of each passing car, you want to scream: “I know you see me! I know you see them! Why don’t you care? How can you sleep at night?

And there’s no answer except another engine revving up as an annoyed driver races past you. The world has turned a blind eye and shut the door to their hearts.

I know you feel overwhelmed. I know you feel like your efforts don’t matter and nothing is changing. It’s tempting to despair and throw in the towel because the culture of death seems to be winning. But it isn’t. We’ve had major setbacks but in the end, life will be victorious. Please know that while many frozen hearts are sleeping, you are planting seeds in unknown souls everywhere. For the one or two people who tell you that protesters helped change their minds about abortion, there are hundreds or even thousands more, not revealing a change in their minds. They aren’t looking to be celebrated or even acknowledged. They might not even be able to articulate or remember an image in their mind that has lived quietly, patiently… waiting until the critical moment when a ‘choice’ must be made before it manifests itself. These people are just trying to do the best they can with the conscience they have.

And your job is to be a light into the dark consciences everywhere… a blinding ray of Morning Sun that can only be seen when an intellect is open to the light and not curtained off.  But every now and then, and in every soul everywhere, something at some point causes a disruption in the curtains and truth will come flooding in for a brief instant before the person has a chance to stop it and readjust.

Most darkened hearts will try to ignore it and move on. But every once in a while, a person is honest enough with themselves to have to grapple with the Light and make sense of it and allow it to change them. You can not know or control when someone is open to receiving the truth. But you can be that light, steady and constant in proclaiming that life matters and abortion is wrong.

Dear activists, this fight is worth fighting. We need your sacrifice of time and energy. We need your courage and perseverance.  Please stay committed. Please know that the most important things in life require valiant effort, especially in the valley of the darkest evil.

I thank you. And I pray future generations will thank you for standing vigil and staying strong in one of the darkest, most disordered eras of our nation. The story of human history is not over and it’s not doomed to complete dystopia. Hope will always sustain us. Don’t lose hope.