Push Back The Darkness

By |Published On: October 29, 2020|Categories: 4-Minute Radio Program|
A scene of a thickly wooded forest with the sunrise streaming through the trees.

It happened in the 1980s when I served back in Washington, D.C.

Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and, yep, many decades ago, President Reagan appointed me to serve on the National Council on Disability. Our fifteen-member Council met regularly in our nation’s capital; we were a bipartisan group of advocates, special-needs parents, wheelchair-users like me; and all of us, liberals and conservatives. It was our job to review any legislation or government initiatives that had to do with disability. And I recall during one session, we received a report from the National Institutes on Health. The NIH had put together a list of disability prevention measures, and they wanted our Council to review it and recommend it. Well, when we studied the list, all of us noticed that the NIH was recommending abortion as one of their disability prevention strategies. In other words, if you want to reduce disability in America, one way to do it is to abort unborn babies who have disabilities.

We were appalled. All fifteen members of our counsel – get this – with Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals – we resoundingly condemned that report. No way should the NIH – a federal agency funded by taxpayers – no way should it tout abortion as a strategy to reduce disabling conditions. Didn’t they understand that they weren’t reducing the condition; they were killing the individual with the condition?! Now, that was back in the late 1980s. But, just a few years later, the tide turned. Now, in the US and many countries, abortion is lauded as an effective and progressive way to eradicate disabling conditions. Never mind that, again, you eradicate the people with those conditions. Over the decades, in my years as a disability advocate, I’ve seen that when people are treated as things, everyone in society loses. When life, and with it human dignity, is so callously abused, the moral threads that bind us together unravel, and everyone does what is right in their own eyes. Just like the times of Isaiah when he said: “See, darkness covers the earth,” the prophet said, “and thick darkness is over the people.” Oh that God would raise up new prophetic voices, right? Friends and advocates to help dispel that darkness, bring the God of the Bible back into the national debate. Advocates who will be a voice for the voiceless; who will show women who are pregnant that, yes, the life they are carrying is precious. Their child has a right to life – a right that should supersede the lesser entitlement of a woman’s sense of privacy or convenience or comfort. Our nation needs people who care; people who will speak up for, contend for, and rescue those who are falling through the cracks. And it is what I am praying for as we come up on this election.

And I trust you’re praying the same way. Even though the tide seems against us, remember: we are praying to a God that specializes in impossibilities. And if you need to be reminded of that, Ken and I are using a great resource called the Pray for Life Bible. It includes a day-by-day guide to help you pray daily for the cause of life in specific and committed ways. It’s also got great devotionals and resources to help inform you on the pro-life movement. Find out more at joniradio.org, and thank you for exalting Jesus – the Word of Life; the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Prince of Life, the Creator of all life – in your prayers! Thank you for having mountain-moving faith together with Joni and Friends as we pray for life. Again, find out more at joniradio.org. Again, joniradio.org.

© Joni and Friends

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