Burning Ones

Tim and I saw “Amazing Grace” the other night and I’m still completely wrecked by it. And so I’ve kinda been mopping around the house, aimlessly wandering, for the past couple of days simply because I’m depressed and I don’t know what else to do.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the movie it’s the story of Wilberforce: a man who almost single-handedly ended slavery in Europe. I remember thinking to myself while watching the movie, “wow, what an exciting time to be alive.” There was such a clear injustice going on. God created all men equal and here you have men possessing other men because of skin.

I began to think about what I would be doing if I lived in that time period. Who cares that I would be a woman! I would have rallied up every woman I knew (and maybe earned some respect amongst the men) and held meetings and meetings where we would try and figure out what to do about this lie that has been embedded into our society. I would start saving and saving. And then I would purchase a slave and set them free. And then I would start saving again, living poor. And even if I only could save one slave in my entire life I would feel fulfilled.

I would allow the issue to consume my life.

And what am I doing about abortion!? What? The issue of abortion isn’t clear enough for me as slavery is? Is it not a greater and far bigger injustice? I have fifty million dead brothers and sisters and what do I do? I wear a little red bracelet around my right wrist and every time I look at it and I mutter a nice prayer, “Jesus I plead your blood over my sins and the sin of my nation. Please end abortion and send revival to America,” and continue with what I was doing.

Do my brother and sisters not deserve more? Oh, where is my compassion? I can’t even weep over such a monstrosity! And ugh, I feel powerless to do anything. I could preach someone’s ear off about their lack of awareness about the subject and I’m not doing anything about it. And I have such a giant list of excuses: I can’t offer to adopt someone’s baby, I’m living with my parents. I can’t go to the abortion clinics and befriend someone, that’s cheap. I can’t start trying to make people aware, that’s offensive. Oh, and how the church has cowered in the face of the world because of that word!

This hit me like maybe half way through the movie and at some point in the movie Wilberforce is in immense pain because of this illness that he has and his wife is pregnant. And after tearing apart his bedroom because of the pain, his wife comes up to him and he grabs her protruding stomach and says, (this is totally paraphrased) “my son! I can hear him now! Tell me about my son!” As he collapses with pain his wife begins to tell him about his unborn child, “he will have a voice. He will have a strong voice!” I can’t express to you with words what that scene did to me, or how brutal, wonderful and weighty of a scene it was.. I just recommend you seeing it.

But the director probably had no idea! There is just a powerful injustice going on and we stuff cotton in our ears because it’s too big. It’s just too big. Every woman is encouraged to take birth control, the church especially, and no one is willing to do the research that it can certainly be an abortifacient! And I refuse to tell anyone because I don’t want to be offensive. God save me.

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