amokarts

Wednesday, September 16, 2009 MCPC Blizzard of Blessings Poster
This morning, I polished off a poster I have been thinking about for quite some time. I did some of the drawings earlier in the week. This piece is a real labor of love for me and my prayer is that it would be part of a very successful campaign. I'd like to give a little background. I don't know that I was always pro-life, but in the 13 year gap between my two sons, two miscarriages pretty much cemented the position in my mind. There was a time where I was a radical about it. I was a died in the wool republican because of this position and spent a great deal of time pushing people to vote republican as a result. My politics, my faith and my position were all pretty much tied together and at times, I got pretty ugly.

Somewhere along the line, something changed. Oh I'm still pro-life and I wish there would never be another abortion, but I started to get pretty disenchanted with a lot of what I saw in the pro-life community, especially that which relates to the church. I remember taking my son to a Promise Keeper's event and having to shield his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the eight foot posters of mutilated babies operation rescue had posted outside. I saw Rock for Life's Abortion is Homicide t-shirts at the music festivals and I began to think, "What if someone here has had one?" Where is the message of love and grace and forgiveness that Jesus died to give us? I couldn't find the love in the movement or the political rhetoric.

Once this had happened, I began to look at things differently. I began to see the same people who want to march in the streets in front of a clinic would also whine about welfare. There is a disconnect there, somewhere as well. We want a young unmarried girl to keep her baby but we don't want to help her feed it. I decided there has to be a better way. There has to be a way to be pro-life and still show people the love and grace of Jesus as we are commanded to do. What came out of this is a desire to be practically pro-life. In other words we want to show love and grace and we want to put our money where our mouths are and step up to help. We are a very small church without a lot of resources, but we have found a ministry in our area (Mercy Crisis Pregnancy Center) with a similar vision a vision to do more than just talk and we are in the early stages of coming along side them. One of their first requests was for Christmas gifts to be handed out to young moms for their children. Blizzard of Blessings came out of that.