This week, we focus on the sanctity of human life at its best and its worst.

Discovering that more than 48 million babies have been aborted since 1973 … I can’t fathom that amount, let alone that they were innocent babies, the weakest of the weak discarded in the blink of an eye. Every day in the United States, 3,500 abortions are performed. That is 146 per hour, or about one every 25 seconds.

God have mercy on us … yes, us! We as Christians, who claim to follow Christ, are responsible for these lives. Do you find yourself saying, “It doesn’t pertain to me, it doesn’t affect me, someone else will handle this issue”? If everyone tends to say that, who’s speaking for the unborn?

Another year is here, another march on Washington. Can we, as a community, take more responsibility this year? Can we follow Christ and have the courage to stand up for the truth? Abortion is wrong. Let the killing stop.

Education and awareness are musts. We must thank those who make it their focus to educate, to do outreach, and we thank our community that holds the options to help pregnant women.

It’s so simple, so clear, yet so hard when those who choose to play God have the power to extinguish life. Our next prayer challenge, for 2007, is that the N.C. legislature and U.S. Congress will consider whether to fund the destruction of human embryos for embryonic stem-cell research using tax dollars. We need to pray for those who are putting aside the facts that adult stem cells can come morally from adult tissues, afterbirth tissues and miscarriages. This should be the avenue taken to prove the success of this research.

Let us pray to have the light of Christ shine within ourselves and speak to what is right and wrong.

— Barbara Causey Franklin

Salisbury