March for Life Up Close

LOCALLY SOURCED

March for Life Up Close

Kara Beth Vance

On Saturday, January 8, about 60 people from College Church participated in the March for Life held in Chicago. We gathered at Federal Plaza with thousands to hear pro-life speakers from various backgrounds. After the rally, we walked our route by Daley Plaza, Millennium Park, and the Art Institute on Michigan Ave. and passed by people in cars and on sidewalks who saw our message and experienced the positive tone of the march.

Several friends have asked me over the years why we participate in March for Life. There are lots of reasons. Some people come because of the media attention this event attracts, the leaders in various spheres of life that attend or speak at the march, or the notion that events like this are part of a larger strategy to protect the unborn.

The reason that resonates with me was articulated by one attendee from College Church who wrote after the march that our participation “has a price: a Saturday afternoon, cold, counter-protest tension, but it should cost us something.”

The March for Life is one opportunity to put feet to our beliefs, and it does cost us something—time, saying no to plans, standing in the cold. We are always encouraged, however, by the thousands of people who also participate and make the same sacrifices to be there that day with us.

I remember how overwhelming it was the first time that I went to March for Life in Washington D.C. There were probably 100,000 there to celebrate life and oppose abortion. I had never been with so many people who not only knew the value of each life but wanted to do something (even if it was a small something) and be a witness of this to the watching world.

There is a temptation in the church to withdraw from conversations taking place in the public square, but what we believe does have implications every day in public life. The truth is that all human beings are valuable because they are made in the image of God, so intentionally taking the life of another human being is an attack on God’s image bearer. Abortion takes human life and is legal in the United States. This is not the way it should be. And we, as Christians, ought to be shining light on these conversations, and standing for

this vulnerable group in the public square as well as in our private lives and spheres of influence.

March for Life is an opportunity for us to do this together as a church—take a public stand to witness to this truth— and to consider how to be winsome witnesses to this truth in our ordinary lives throughout the year.

I will admit that on the morning of January 8, I reluctantly got ready to participate in the march. The forecast promised freezing rain in the afternoon. It had been an exhausting week, and it was hard to get motivated for a day out in the cold. But the Lord reminded me that the truth that compels me to advocate for the value of every human life doesn’t change based on whether I’m having a good or a bad day or have high or low energy. There are human lives on the line. We have already lost more than 60,000,000 lives to abortion in the U.S. since 1973.

I long for the day when abortion will be both illegal in this nation and unthinkable in our culture. Until that day, may the Lord strengthen the church to faithfully stand for what is good and right and true in public and in private, that God would be glorified, and people would be rescued.

Join the Sanctity of Human Life Task Force in prayer at Planned Parenthood for pregnant clients to feel God’s care and desire to give life to their unborn babies. We pray in partnership with 40 Days for Life’s year-round peaceful prayer vigil for the vulnerable, abortion industry workers, and our culture.

Saturday, February 19, 1-2 p.m.

Park at Mariano’s or behind AutoZone and meet on Waterleaf pregnancy resource center’s property across from Planned Parenthood Aurora’s driveway.

Sign up at www.college-church.org/impact/sohl to receive SOHL monthly e-newsletter to receive events schedule and life-related news.