24 minutes and 12 seconds

As I hung up the phone,I glanced at how much time had lapsed during my conversation. The call was from an abortion prevention counseling center. A lady that spoke only Spanish had come in for an ultrasound and wanted to have an abortion. The counseling center knew that I spoke Spanish and wanted me to tell the lady a few things.

"The screen shows your baby and he or she is almost 13 weeks old". "Look at the tiny hands and feet that are already formed." "Look here is your baby's heart, it's beating." "You don't need to have an abortion, we will help you with anything that you need." "If you decided you want to place your baby for adoption, we can help you."

The more I translated these words to the lady that had come in for an abortion, the less convinced she seemed to listen to my words. Though I receive calls like this every now and then, I reflected for some reason differently today. I think it was because I was suddenly cast in the midst of a women that had the power if determined to end a human life.

Our society and specifically here in the USA, have sanitized this process of ending a human life by placing a label on this action; pro-choice. As a country we have relegated what only belongs to God to decided to something as simple as choosing between vanilla or chocolate ice cream.

The lady I spoke today, thanks to the volunteers and supporters at this abortion prevention center, had the incredible opportunity to look at a monitor and see a real human life before her eyes. The lie that what was inside of her was just a bunch of tissue, was cast aside.

As I go on with my regular day of activities and things to do, this young lady will leave that counseling center wrestling with the thought to allow this baby to live. Or to succumb to the sanitized process of "flushing away" a life because it is just not what is convenient at the moment.

I pray that the 24 minutes and 12 seconds that I had today to speak to a lady on the verge of ending a life and the guidance from the counselors, that she would reconsider and give the life created by God inside of her an opportunity to live.

Not disappointed

When faced with hard times on occasions relatives or friends ask what will I do? My response: I trust that God will take care of the situation. To be specific I am refering to the hardships that I cannot resolve with my own abilities or resources. The well intended response that comes back to me from others on some occasions is: "that is great that you trust and have such large faith in God but you got to do something else besides faith and trust".

That leads me to the scary moments I confided that I do not like to be in. Will my faith and trust in God disappoint me one day? I mean will the need or situation I am facing come crashing down and leave my faith and trust in God to see me through the need or situation laying in the dust?

The answer after many experiences of this nature, is that God does not disappoint me. His timing compared to mine may be off. His method compared to mine may not make sense. The people he engaged to help me would not be the ones I would choose.

In fact many times I have not seen things get resolved at all but even that pathway still does not lead me to disappointment.
The truth be told I would not have it any other way. I abhor the thought to "lean on my own understanding". I prefer instead to join the company of men like Abraham that "against all hope, Abraham in hope believed" .

I don't know what things seem hopeless for you today. But I do know that regardless of what you are going through that faith and trust in God will always insure that you will never be disappointed.