The Audacity of 40 Days

It feels obnoxious.

Standing in front of an abortion clinic, where young women come in and out, tending to their most private concerns: I often wonder if this is the right thing to do.

Praying openly in the streets: it feels Pharisaical. I become painfully aware of my own deceitful self-righteousness. Shouldn’t I be praying secretly in my room with the shades down low?

These are the things I wrestle with every time the bi-annual 40 Days for Life prayer vigils roll around. Is this really the right thing to do?

Of course, I have to consider the particulars of the 40 Days for Life movement. I have never seen a disrespectful outburst or accusation from the prayer volunteers. I have never heard them speak prideful condemnations against the clients inside the clinics, even in private. Clearly, the motivation and spirit of these volunteers is not the same as the Pharisees of old.

And still, it feels obnoxious. What am I doing out here?

I keep falling back on one question:

Would it be considered obnoxious if children were really being killed inside these walls?

If children were really being brought daily to this ground to be put to death, would I still be concerned about appearing obnoxious?

If this were the case, the question wouldn’t even cross my mind. If children were really being killed, the streets would be lined with volunteers of every creed: Christians, Muslims, and Atheists alike, Conservatives and Liberals, standing together against the barbaric practice.

But wait…

Children are being killed inside these walls. Throughout King County, the abortion rate is 1 in 4.

The very “hypothetical” I have constructed reveals that I still don’t quite get it: that on a certain level, I don’t fully believe that life begins at conception. I languish under the great deception just as the rest, continuing to look at life through man’s eyes versus God’s.

Maybe it is obnoxious to stand outside an abortion clinic–but perhaps a little loving audacity is precisely what is needed to wake us up–to wake me up–from what abolitionist Benjamin Lundy called “that stupid spell of apathy.”

I still question what the right path is, I question my motives and how I am perceived. But maybe I need to continue attending these vigils, if for no other reason than to convince myself that what goes on inside the four walls of Planned Parenthood is far more obnoxious than what happens just outside the door.