©2013 — 40 Days for Life, Inc. www.40daysforlife.com
Devotional for Day 17, October 11, 2013
Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life
Intention:
May all understand more deeply that
the pro-life message is rooted in two
basic truths of life:
1) There is a God
2) He isn’t me
Scripture:
And the Lord God formed man of the
dust of the ground, and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living being.
—Genesis 2:7
Reflection:
From the beginning of the Bible until the end, the theme is echoed that God alone has dominion over human life. He made it; shared it; died to save it; will raise it up forever. The act of creation described in Genesis 2:7, and earlier in Genesis 1:26-27, is a sovereign act. God did not have to do it, and would have been happy forever without us. Yet without our asking for it or earning it, God brought us out of nothingness and into life, and sustains our existence at every moment. And He does so in Christ: “For by Him all things were created…in Him all things exist” (Colossians 1:16-17). “You are not your own,” Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 6. God alone owns us.
While He entrusts us to the care of one another, He does not allow any human being to own another. A Southern California abortionist, James McMahon, once explained how he justified killing children after 20 weeks gestation by the process known as partial-birth abortion. He did not deny that this was a child, but rather asked, “Who owns the child? It’s got to be the mother.”
The struggle over abortion is really a struggle over the dominion of God. The Christian individual, and the Christian Church, cannot sit idly by when others declare that God is not God.
Prayer:
Lord, we are yours. Thank you for
breathing into us the breath of life.
Thank you for claiming us as your own.
May our words and actions in defense
of human life proclaim to all the world
that you alone are Lord of life and
death, Lord of our freedom and of our
choices.
We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
I’m undertaking to post all the blog entries. We’ll see how far I get today.