Good Morning!
Before I forget, I would like to make a plug for the Central MN Youth for Christ lunch and dessert fundraisers that are being held on Thursday, November 29, 2018 in St. Cloud, MN. I have known these folks for a long time and have hosted several overnight events at my farm. Great staff and great cause. Here’s the link: https://www.cmyfc.org/
I know I have been encouraged to shorten my posts and keep the bible verses short, but I have difficulty limiting the word of God. Today is no exception considering that we are coming off disappointing elections. I really dislike the idea of being a one-item voter, but more and more I cannot even consider voting for a party that has so forcefully promotes genocide. For the record, Microsoft defines genocide as the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. If we can’t consider the unborn a large group of people, we can’t consider anybody.
Anyway, this is the Democratic Party Platform with the heading “Securing Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice.”
Democrats are committed to protecting and advancing reproductive health, rights, and justice. We believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion—regardless of where she lives, how much money she makes, or how she is insured. We believe that reproductive health is core to women’s, men’s, and young people’s health and wellbeing. We will continue to stand up to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood health centers, which provide critical health services to millions of people. We will continue to oppose—and seek to overturn—federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment. We condemn and will combat any acts of violence, harassment, and intimidation of reproductive health providers, patients, and staff. We will defend the ACA, which extends affordable preventive health care to women, including no-cost contraception, and prohibits discrimination in health care based on gender.
We will address the discrimination and barriers that inhibit meaningful access to reproductive health care services, including those based on gender, sexuality, race, income, disability, and other factors. We recognize that quality, affordable comprehensive health care, evidence-based sex education and a full range of family planning services help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.
And we strongly and unequivocally support a woman’s decision to have a child, including by ensuring a safe and healthy pregnancy and childbirth, and by providing services during pregnancy and after the birth of a child, including adoption and social support services, as well as protections for women against pregnancy discrimination. We are committed to creating a society where children are safe and can thrive physically, emotionally, educationally, and spiritually. We recognize and support the importance of civil structures that are essential to creating this for every child.
In a day gone by, there was such a thing as a politician who would dissent from the party line base upon on certain firmly-held beliefs. Not any longer. Our two-party system holds tight, tight, tight in opposition to the other side. There is no such thing as voting for the candidate. It doesn’t matter what the bloke thinks or believes. As soon as s/he is elected, they line up along party lines. We all know this to be true.
I wasn’t going to write about any of this today, but the Lord led me to Ephesians 4 this morning. It is fitting for today. Here’s the lengthy scripture I mentioned:
Ephesians 4:17-24 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ – assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Paul goes on with some very good advice for us all, just as much today as when he wrote it:
v. 25-32 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
For me, I think I need to speak truth about abortion. I do speak about it among my “safe” friends, but I seldom speak of it openly. That needs to change. I also must remember what Paul wrote in Romans 1:28 regarding many of who may hear, “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” I won’t be able to reason this through with a large number of people who hear me, so I must be careful not to get upset (as Paul instructed in Ephesians 4:25-32). However, I also need to “speak the truth with (my) neighbor.”
Right?
Father, give me courage. Amen.
Copyright © 2018 Scott Powers