Thursday, December 27, 2012

Jesus, Love and Crisis Pregnancy

I don't know what you'd expect to find at a crisis pregnancy center.

We've supported a local pregnancy care ministry for years, and this Christmas we delivered some items they'd requested in an update newsletter.

We parked our car right in front of their street-side doorway, adjacent to the barbershop, just across from the local pharmacy. Its a few blocks south of the state university extension campus, with over 20,000 students. A nearby high school had just let out and their kids noisily jostled by on the sidewalk as we unloaded the car

My wife and I made a few trips carrying items up the staircase and into the cheerfully windowed waiting room. The walls are painted a comforting shade of light blue, and the fresh scent of baby powder reminded me of our own daughter's long ago nursery.

We set up the new card table and chairs next to the play area with its basketful of toddler toys. Some of the women who come already have younger children.

It would have only taken several minutes for Sarah to walk us through the simple suite of rooms. But she also paused to describe a "typical" day in her ministry there. The first small room is lined floor to ceiling with wrapped packets of baby items. Sara noted that she sometimes receives cribs and basinets. She lovingly showed the hand-knitted receiving blankets that are made and donated by women from local churches.

In the next room was a clean, spare office with table and chair. Sarah explained that she meets women or couples to understand their need. Some have already given birth and are seeking items like those stored in the adjacent room. Others need a pregnancy test or are seeking an ultrasound (a licensed volunteer visits the center and uses the donated ultrasound system). Still others just need to talk, and Sarah listens.

Sarah offers to pray with her visitors and also provides bibles to those who are interested. Many are.
Some are "exploring options" and Sarah provides factual counsel on the baby created by conception - ultrasounds help to visualize what could otherwise be dismissed as tissue. Her newsletter is filled with names and photos of babies who her clients have chosen to birth.

I don't know exactly what happens in the other "pregnancy" centers that are funded with hundreds of millions of dollars from public taxes. Recent undercover video stings suggest that instead of wise, Godly counsel, some women at Planned Parenthood are simply enabled to abort on demand. Their ultrasounds aren't linked with open, candid dialog to support evidence of life that begins at conception. Planned Parenthood doesn't have Sarah.

Sarah listens and offers to help. She and the ministry provide reassurance, resources and hand-knitted blankets for the babies they pray to see born. Before we left, I helped Sarah position the sturdy new step stool we brought for the ultrasound table. There in the room of the cheerful second floor office that provides pregnancy care - and much more.  I wonder what her ministry could accomplish, and how many lives might be saved, with a million dollars?  Ten million dollars?

We believe in Sarah and the local pregnancy care ministry.  What do you believe?

No comments: