24 & More
It’s been two years to the day since I’ve written a blog. I’ve been busy. Embroiled in a season of full-time care for my elderly parents—a trying season of navigating their disabilities, dementia, deteriorating health, and all the strains that come with familial uncertainty and tension. It’s been a hard two years. And with my father in skilled nursing after a recent fall, a subsequent infection, and pneumonia and my mother in a memory care facility, it’s not over. End-of-life trials are hard for everyone! Full of ups and downs, but it’s still living. Even in these diminished days, there are still valuable relationships, philanthropy, the simple pleasures of food, music, and a hundred other little joys. Life may be limited, disorienting, painful, and not much fun at times but there is also laughter, smiles, beauty, flowers, the tender touch, a kind word or gesture. Little things, sure. But little things matter! Truly our lives, on the whole, consist of millions of little things. The tiniest, perhaps, being that first moment of existence in our mother’s wombs. The central core of Anna’s Choice and our mission to awaken the world to the profound importance of life and, particularly, our formative days of development in that broader journey. A journey my parents have experienced and shared for nearly 90 years and counting. That miracle we all, who are living, experience from conception to undetermined death. And so, I’m back. Here once again to share the wonders of the womb, the miracle of life, and the purpose and value of each and every one of us.
Today, as I departed from my father’s bedside after reading him the 24th Psalm, I asked him if there was anything he needed or wanted before I left, and he said, “Depart from evil and do good.” And I said, “Yeah, good advice.” My father’s advice further biblical wisdom found in the 34th Psalm. But it got me thinking as I left. It’s truly that simple isn’t it. What if more of us strove for this? Or even better yet, Psalm 24’s admonition that only those who have, “clean hands and a pure heart can ascend the Lord’s hill and stand in His holy place.” What if we departed from evil? What if we had clean hands? What if we sought to do good and asked the Holy One to purify our hearts–to make us more like Him? Wouldn’t we be better? Wouldn’t our community, our state, our nation, be better? Our world be better? What if more of our leaders sought this? Our representatives? Our business people? Our artists? Our pastors? Our community leaders? Our educators? Our journalists? Our lawyers? Our doctors? Ourselves? The choice is ever before us, is it not? We can, with the Lord’s help, depart from evil and do good. Will we?
Over the last two years in our nation a million little things have changed or come and gone. Many efforts of light amid a darkening world. Many good things, many bad. Encouraging victories. Agonizing defeats. But in the main we still find ourselves in a flourishing culture of death. Roe has shifted, the courts have played a role, activists have been active, but abortion is still here, and sadly the same proportion of innocent children are sacrificed upon its altar. Not much has changed. Perhaps we’ve not changed? Are we ready to depart from evil and do good?
Please join me as I reinsert Anna’s Choice in the conversation, the struggle, and the effort to bring all of us back to life.
God bless, Joel
https://www.guttmacher.org/2024/03/despite-bans-number-abortions-united-states-increased-2023