The Silent Cry

I enjoy family conversations around the table.
They are engaging as we banter back and forth about anything and everything.
Sometimes it is nice to just sit back and listen.

Recently, we talked about dreams and the recurring themes that seem to prevail.
Getting lost; being chased by someone, and being unable to run away.
We all experienced the dream of being frightened and the scream just wouldn’t come.

Mouth open…but no sound comes out.
Frightening.
No one hears your cry for help.

Helpless…when help is so near.

When my children were babies, I learned the sound of their cry.
The tired cry, the hungry cry…each distinguishable from the other.

The pain cry that began so silently.

Those few seconds when their mouth is open but no sound comes out.
In that silent time, the child is actually feeling the pain.
The piercing wail, right after the silence, is their response to that pain.

Their silent cry alerts us that this pain is serious.
A mother will do anything to protect her child, and ease their physical pain.

The head of our church mission board spoke during our service.
He reminded us that the Executive Director of our local Crisis Pregnancy Center was speaking at the evening service.

He spoke on the numbers of deaths from the Holocaust, the Killing Fields, and the Sudan.
The number of all of these horrific deaths put together is far less than the number of babies aborted since Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land.

God hears the cry of these children, he said through his tears.
His heart was laid out for all of us to see…and to love.

If a young child has a silent cry as their response to pain, what about a baby in the womb?

When I was pregnant with each of my children, I knew their movements.
There was such comfort in feeling them.
The rhythmic beat when they had hiccups; other predictable movements during the day.
My belly would look like the rolling waves on the sea as they shifted position inside me.

They responded to music.
They responded to the voices of their siblings, as they pressed their face against my belly.
They whispered their secrets to the baby and told them they loved them.
They couldn’t wait for the baby to be born.

They are babies on the other side.
The veil of time separates them from us, for a while.
They are very much alive.
They are very much a person.

They are not a person simply because we say so.
They are a person, from the moment of conception, because God says so.

Young mothers, unmarried and afraid are being lied to out of convenience and expediency.
It is not a baby…it is a glob of tissue.

A glob of tissue is disposable.
Babies are not.

Change the word…change the argument.
God’s people have to RECLAIM the words.
God’s people have to put HIS Words back into the public square from which they’ve been intentionally removed.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.
Before you were born I set you apart. (Jeremiah 1:5)

Ask any pregnant mother to show you the ultrasound picture of her baby.
She can point to every appendage; she can outline the shape of the nose.
She can see her baby suck his thumb.
She can count toes.

Her baby is often given a name before birth.
Her baby is alive…a part of her…a part of their family.

That ultrasound picture is worth a thousand words.
It is a window that enables her to see a glimpse of the baby on the other side.
The side that God sees.

Regain the words.
Not fetus…BABY!
Not anti-abortion…PRO-LIFE!
Not a glob of tissue…HUMAN BEING, MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD!

We must be a culture of life.
We must be life affirming so HIS Life will be affirmed.
We must begin to see what God sees.
We must hear the silent cry that God hears.

Those beautiful, unborn babies must never be helpless when help is so near.

How ironic that a baby is protected on this side but is expendable on the other side.
Location does not matter to God.
God sees the life and the eternal soul of a precious child from the moment of conception.

Yet You brought me out of the womb; You made me trust in You even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast upon You; from my mother’s womb You have been my God. Do not be far from me for trouble is near and there is no one to help. (Psalm 22:9-11)

Trouble is near.
May it never be said that there is no one to help!
Proclaim God’s Word loud and clear.

You created me in my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made…(Psalm 139:13,14)

God sees.
God hears the cry of these precious children on the other side.

Do we?