In 2004, 139 lives were lost each and every minute in the United States.  What claimed those 1,222,100 lives?  Was it cancer?  Diabetes?  Heart disease?  Well, not heart disease in the traditional, clogged arteries sense, but it was due to a heart disease of a different sort.  Over a million women in the U.S. chose to end their children’s lives through abortion.  A heart disease that can’t be fixed through legislation, or through legalization, or through any government agency…but only through the love of Christ.

Christ’s love is endless and abundant and covers over every one of our failings.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. Matthew 23:37

How many of those aborted would have been prophets or messengers? or the inventors of alternative energy sources? or scientists who find the cure for cancer?  Christ knew that we would be resistant to him and to his message, and he loves us anyway.  He loves the mothers who made the choice to abort and he loves those babies whose lives were snuffed out before they had the chance to experience life abundantly.

I do not condemn the mothers of those 1.2 million babies.  I ache for them because they thought there was no other way to deal with the unexpected and unwanted miracle happening inside their wombs.  But there is another way: adoption.

As my husband and I consider adoption, the Lord has been pressing into my thoughts the idea of adoption as a ministry.  After all, as Christians we have been adopted into God’s chosen family:

And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus.  Ephesians 3:6

If we decide to adopt a child, we will do everything we can as parents to pass on this Good News, and not just to the child.  The adoption agency we are considering has a ministry to birth parents, and we will be given an opportunity to establish a relationship with them as well.  What better way to show Christ’s love than to take someone else’s child — perhaps a child that may have otherwise been aborted — love him, and raise him as our own?  Isn’t that what the Lord has done with me?  He took me and lives in me and is “raising” me still.  As I tell my friends, the Lord’s not finished with me yet!

So rather than looking into adoption in terms of what it would add to or take away from our family, God is nudging me to consider what it would mean to the child.  If our decision to adopt impacts even one woman and causes her to choose life, then our decision would be worth it — for the child, for the woman, and for our family.  And then,  for one minute in time, the number of children lost to abortion would be 138 instead of 139.

Perhaps it is time to put our faith into action and show true love and sacrifice.