Baby robins weigh about 5.5 grams at birth–less than the weight of a quarter. At about 13 days, the baby robin jumps from the nest. At this stage they are referred to as “fledglings.” The baby robin is not yet able to fly. It will be another two weeks or so before the little bird can truly fend for itself. For the first few days after leaving the nest, the parents will continue to feed their babies. I witnessed this fascinating behavior the other day at a place that made the occurrence more than a little ironic. It was in a tree just off the property of Planned Parenthood, in Iowa City.
Baby Robins Poop a Lot
I spent the morning in a place I wish I never had to visit, but at least I was there with good friends. I spent the morning outside Planned Parenthood in Iowa City, with Elder Nick and Julie Rolland and their three youngest children. Planned Parenthood is set to close four locations in Eastern Iowa. Unfortunately, the location in Iowa City isn’t one of them.
I stood in my regular spot, on the sidewalk, just beyond the abortuary’s driveway. In the grass easement on the opposite side of the sidewalk sits a tree (the one picture above). I leaned an evangelism sign against the tree’s trunk. I stood with my cross and waved to passing motorists. “Clients” began to arrive all having one horrific thing in common. They came to end the lives of their unborn children.
I heard a rustling in the tree and the distinguishable chirp of a young bird. Two mature American Robins foraged on the ground, near the tree. I looked into the tree and saw an immature robin sitting high on the branch.
I happened to look down at my sign. It looked like a pterodactyl relieved itself all over the front of my sign. I looked up at the little bird again, looked down at my sign, and looked back at the bird. I did the math in my head. That tiny bird made a very big mess on my sign.
I cleaned the foreign matter off the sign and put the sign back against the tree. Shortly thereafter, the little bird pooped on my sign. I alerted Nick to the reoccurring problem and said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over again, expecting a different result!” It was one of those rare, light moments outside the abortuary.
The Sick Irony of It All
One-by-one Nick and Julie shared in walking his three children from the opposite side of the abortuary driveway to look at the simple beauty of life in the tree. He pointed to the baby robin in the tree and gently educated his children–explaining to them what they were seeing and answering their questions. It was a joy to watch Nick and Julie parent their children.
All of a sudden, like an unexpected punch to the gut, I was struck by the sick irony of it all.
The two robins, mother and baby, interacted with each other according to their nature. They were birds doing what birds do. Of course the mother robin cared for her young. Of course she spent most of her time foraging for food, for her baby. Of course she put herself at risk hopping through the grass and making herself susceptible to a nearby hidden predator like a hawk or a feral cat. The baby bird likewise lived according to its nature. It constantly chipped for its mother, wanting the mother’s attention and the food she provided. The little ball of feathers, feet, and beak sat high in the tree chirping, eating, pooping, and repeating.
One hundred feet away stood the entrance to the abortuary. Inside the building men and women lived life contrary to God’s good intentions. They, too, lived according to their nature. However, unlike the birds, the human nature of the people inside the abortuary was marred by sin. Instead of loving and providing for their children, the people inside the building, with premeditation and malice aforethought were engaged in murdering their children.
The mothers and fathers inside the abortuary were ending the lives of their children, not because they had no other choice, not because they had no other option, but rather because they had no other desire. In the end, every life taken inside the abortuary was taken for convenience sake.
Robins live according to God’s design and intent. The vast majority of human beings in the world do not live that way. They live contrary to God’s design and intent. They live according to their own sinful desires. Robins lay eggs and raise chicks. Many humans kill their children in the womb.
Look at the Birds of the Air
In order to shake the thoughts of the sick irony and in order to right and renew my thinking, I turned my thoughts to Scripture. I looked again at the baby robin in the tree and its mother nearby searching for food in the grass. This passage came to mind:
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:25-34).
This is my wife’s favorite passage of Scripture. There have been many times in our lives in which we have turned to this passage for comfort and reassurance.
For brevity’s sake, I will limit commentary on the above passage to someone far more knowledgable than myself–theologian Matthew Henry. He wrote:
“There is scarcely any sin against which our Lord Jesus more warns his disciples, than disquieting, distracting, distrustful cares about the things of this life. This often insnares the poor as much as the love of wealth does the rich. But there is a carefulness about temporal things which is a duty, though we must not carry these lawful cares too far. Take no thought for your life. Not about the length of it; but refer it to God to lengthen or shorten it as he pleases; our times are in his hand, and they are in a good hand. Not about the comforts of this life; but leave it to God to make it bitter or sweet as he pleases. Food and raiment God has promised, therefore we may expect them. Take no thought for the morrow, for the time to come. Be not anxious for the future, how you shall live next year, or when you are old, or what you shall leave behind you. As we must not boast of tomorrow, so we must not care for tomorrow, or the events of it. God has given us life, and has given us the body. And what can he not do for us, who did that? If we take care about our souls and for eternity, which are more than the body and its life, we may leave it to God to provide for us food and raiment, which are less. Improve this as an encouragement to trust in God. We must reconcile ourselves to our worldly estate, as we do to our stature. We cannot alter the disposals of Providence, therefore we must submit and resign ourselves to them. Thoughtfulness for our souls is the best cure of thoughtfulness for the world. Seek first the kingdom of God, and make religion your business: say not that this is the way to starve; no, it is the way to be well provided for, even in this world. The conclusion of the whole matter is, that it is the will and command of the Lord Jesus, that by daily prayers we may get strength to bear us up under our daily troubles, and to arm us against the temptations that attend them, and then let none of these things move us. Happy are those who take the Lord for their God, and make full proof of it by trusting themselves wholly to his wise disposal. Let thy Spirit convince us of sin in the want of this disposition, and take away the worldliness of our hearts.”
Ladies: You Abort Because You Love Yourself
As mentioned above, women abort their children for convenience sake. I’ve heard women cite many reasons for ending the lives of their children–reasons like:
“I can’t afford to raise a child on my own.”
“I’m not ready for a baby. I’m still in school.”
“My dad said he will kick me out of the house if I don’t have an abortion.”
“My boyfriend (or husband) will leave me if I don’t have an abortion.”
“I already have three children.”
“I don’t want to be pregnant during the summer. I want to go to the beach.”
I can assert with all candor and confidence that women abort their children for convenience sake because every time I’m outside an abortuary I see women reject offers of every conceivable kind of assistance.
“Let us help you. We care as much for you as we do for your child. We love you and we want to help you. Whether it is financial, medical, food, clothing, shelter–whatever you need we will provide for you. We have families in our church ready and willing to adopt your child. There’s no reason for your baby to die today. Let us help you.”
This is what women entering the abortuary hear from me and members of my church. Again, women do not abort their children because they have no other option, because they have no other choice. Women abort their children because they have no other desire. Women, young and old, end the lives of their children because they are selfish. They love themselves more than they love the God they know, more than the children they carry in their wombs.
Yes, it is a sinful heart–a deceptive and depraved heart that motivates a woman to kill her unborn child. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it” (Jeremiah 17:9). But there is another reason why women abort their children. They trust the wrong people. They do not trust who they should.
Ladies: You Abort Because You are Anxious and You Don’t Trust God
If you’ve had or you are contemplating having an abortion, you have trusted the wrong people, starting with yourself. You have trusted the one person who deceives you more than anyone else: YOU.
In addition to seeing your heart as deceitful and desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9), this is how God sees you–the person in whom you first place your trust:
“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:10-18).
Again, this is the person you trust most. You’re following the advice of someone who’s default position is to please you by deceiving you.
By trusting yourself, the person who deceives you most often, you will easily convince yourself to trust others who will agree with you. In other words, deceivers trust like-minded deceivers. Like robins, birds of a feather flock together.
Not only do you trust the wrong person/people, you are sinfully anxious about your life. Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on” (Matthew 6:25).
Sadly, if you do not know Jesus Christ, God-in-the-Flesh, as your Lord and Savior you cannot and will not believe His words. Instead, if you find yourself with child as the result of an unplanned pregnancy you will contemplate murdering your unborn child because you are anxious about your life. You are this person:
“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:1-4).
The reason you’ve had an abortion or the reason you are contemplating an abortion is because you are filled with sin-based anxiety, leading you to trust the person you love the most–you.
Because of your selfish, deceived, and desperately sick heart, you want to live your life a certain way–a way that allows you to be the center of the universe you’ve created for yourself, in your heart and mind. As a result, you have relegated your unborn child to an inanimate inconvenience that must be dealt with. In your selfish and self-deceived heart, you have believed many lies. You believe you have a right to do whatever you want with your body, even though you know your baby is not part of your body. Your baby is inside your body. You convince yourself that your baby is a blob of cells or tissues, a parasite or a leech. You know it’s a lie, but you don’t care. “You desire and do not have, so you murder.”
“Your passions are at war within you” and you’re okay with your unborn child being the collateral damage of that war.
And you don’t trust God.
You trust yourself instead of the God who created you, who knit you together in your mother’s womb, just as He knit your son or daughter in your womb.
Instead of trusting God, you trust a boyfriend (not your husband) who thought so little of you that he cared not that he was helping you to sin against God by bedding you. Like a male lion who kills cubs so he can mate with the lionesses, your man wants to kill your baby so he can fornicate with you again, without consequence.
Instead of trusting God, you trust other women who have aborted their children–women who desperately need to justify the murder of their children by convincing you to murder your own.
Instead of trusting God, you will trust an abortionist. You will trust someone who will tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to know. You will trust someone who only benefits if your baby dies. No abortion, no check. You will trust someone who, once you walk out the door of the abortuary, will never give you another thought. He or she will move on to his or her next victim–not the pregnant mother, mind you, but the unborn baby.
Before you try to make the argument that you don’t trust God because you don’t believe He exists…..
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Romans 1:18-25).
You know God exists. You simply suppress the truth you know about God because you love yourself and you love your sin more than you love the God who created you and your baby. And you refuse to trust the God you know for the same reasons: you love yourself and you love your sin more than you love the God who created you and your baby.
There is Yet Hope for You!
Much of this has likely been hard for you to read, if you’ve even made it this far. Oh, I sincerely hope you have! You may try to ignore what you’ve read. You may try to discount what I’ve said by convincing yourself that I’m just an angry man who hates women. You will accuse me of being judgmental as you hypocritically judge me.
I’m not angry with you. I certainly do not hate you (1 John 3:15). In fact, I love you. I love you because God first loved me (1 John 4:19). I love you because I’m a Christian, someone God has caused to be born again to a living hope (1 Peter 1:3-9). I love you as my neighbor (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 5:44; Mark 12:31; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8).
Because I love you, I want to assure you that there is yet hope for you. That you are reading this means you are still breathing. God is allowing you to live at this moment even though you live in wanton rebellion against Him. Just as God allows the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike (Matthew 5:45), He has extended to you His wonderful common grace in that He has allowed you to read truth today. It is the truth that will set you free (John 8:31-32).
More than that, if you will read for just a while longer, He has extended to you His grace today by allowing you to read the gospel. Here it is.
Everyone who stands before God to give an account will do so without excuse (Romans 1:18-23). No one will be able to claim innocence or ignorance of violating God’s law—whether in thought, word, or deed. Because God is good, because He is holy, because He is righteous and just, He must punish sin (Jeremiah 14:10; Hosea 9:9; Luke 13:1-5; John 8:24; Hebrews 9:27; Revelation 20:11-15). The punishment God has determined for sin, all sin, is eternity in Hell (Matthew 25:41-46; Revelation 21:8). It matters not whether a person believes this. What matters is that it is true. Truth is not determined by what one believes. God is truth, though every person is found to be a liar (Romans 3:4).
Truth is that which comports to reality, as perceived by God. Truth is what conforms to the mind of God. Truth is whatever God says. And any attempt to live life apart from the reality of God is to live a life of chaos, absurdity, arrogant denial, and sin.
This same God—again, for there is only one God—who is angry with the wicked every day, whose wrath abides upon the ungodly, who will judge the world in righteousness, is the same God who is loving, merciful, gracious, and kind. And He showed His great love for mankind when He sent His Son to earth in the Person of Jesus Christ—fully God and fully Man, yet without sin (Philippians 2:5-11; 2 Corinthians 5:21).
Jesus of Nazareth, born of a virgin just as the prophet Isaiah declared more than 700 years before Jesus’s literal, physical birth (Isaiah 7:14; 9:6), lived the perfect, sinless life you cannot live. For some 33 years, Jesus lived a life in perfect obedience to the law of God–in thought, word, and deed–a life you and I could not hope to live for a mere 33 seconds. And then He voluntarily went to the cross (John 10:15, 17; 19:1-27).
Yes, it was the Jewish people who hatefully and viciously demanded Jesus’s execution. Yes, it was the Roman government that carried out the despicable act. But they were all merely instruments in the hands of another. For it pleased God the Father to crush God the Son under the full weight and fury of His wrath against sin (Isaiah 53:10-12). God the Father made God the Son, who knew no sin, to become sin on behalf of those who repent and believe the gospel so that through the sacrifice of His Son many would be made righteous in the eyes of Almighty God. In other words, on that great and terrible day God the Father looked upon God the Son as if He had lived the depraved life of a sinner and in exchange—a great exchange—God the Father looks upon those whom He has caused to be born again (1 Peter 1:3), to repent and believe the gospel, as if they had lived His Son’s perfect, precious, and priceless life (Colossians 2:8-15; 2 Corinthians 5:21).
Jesus shed His innocent blood on the cross. He died a literal, physical death on the cross. And He was buried in a tomb not His own. Three days later, Jesus forever defeated sin and death when He physically, bodily rose from the grave (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). And unlike every false god created in the imaginations of men–whether the false gods of Islam, Catholicism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Oprah-ism, or Atheism (a religion like every other spiritual “ism”)—Jesus Christ is alive today and He will return at a time of the Father’s choosing.
What God commands of you and all people everywhere is that you repent (Luke 13:1-5; Acts 17:29-31). Change your mind. Stop believing lies and believe the truth you know—the truth for which you are responsible and will be held accountable. Turn from your sin and turn toward God, and by faith alone receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
You must come to God on His terms. God does not negotiate with sinners. God will not be bribed by your religious practices or what you may perceive as “good works” acceptable to God. God will not weigh your “good” against your “bad,” for God does not see you or anyone else as good. God’s definition of, God’s standard for goodness is moral perfection, and only One has ever, only One will ever meet that standard. And that is Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Messiah, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. As for you, as is the case for the rest of mankind, you have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
If you do not hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and see it for what it is (good news), it is because you love your sin more than you love God. It is because you love yourself more than you love God. It is because the love of God and the Truth of His Word is not in you.
However, if God causes you to be born again and extends to you the gifts of repentance and faith, which only He can give, then He will take your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. You will begin to love the things God loves and hate the things God hates. You will stop presuming upon God’s forgiveness as if it is something you have earned or deserved. Instead, you will have the confident assurance He has forgiven you—not on the basis of any deeds you have done in righteousness, but based entirely upon God’s mercy, grace, and love, and for His glory (Titus 3:4-7).
Why would God allow His one and only Son to die a sinner’s death He did not deserve in order to take upon Himself the punishment sinners rightly deserve for their sins against God, so that sinners could be forgiven and saved? “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Please repent and receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, while God has given you time.
If You are Contemplating Abortion
My dear neighbor, what my church family and I say to men and women outside the abortuary, I offer to you, now.
Let us help you. We care as much for you as we do for your child. We love you and we want to help you. Whether it is financial, medical, food, clothing, shelter–whatever you need we will provide for you. We have families in our church ready and willing to adopt your child. There’s no reason for your baby to die today. Let us help you.
You can reach me via email at: [email protected].
You can find contact information for my church at: Grace Fellowship Church.
Leave a Reply