Families Belong Together!
by Pastor Michael Salemink
Executive Director
Lutherans For Life
Families belong together! Immigrants (refugees?) sometimes attempt un¬approved entry into our country. Our laws grant each one due process to clarify their crime and their claims. When they bring little ones along, certain regulations have forbidden housing the children with the adults. These arrangements make sense, but we ought not take lightly the separation of the young from parents. So protestors have recently raised the rallying cry against the detentions: Families belong together!
Christians can affirm this assertion. Families do indeed belong together. Both na¬ture and Scripture establish it as truth. Our Almighty Maker and Heavenly Father has put husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers together. What He has joined, no one may rend. Only when it alleviates immediate and extreme danger should we entertain removing one from another, and then only until the risk resolves.
Families belong together. So no more adultery. No more fornication. No more affairs. No more lustful fantasizing. No more pornography. No more perversions. No more sending nude selfies or lewd texts. No more enslaving ourselves to animal¬istic appetites. No more disconnecting sexuality from marriage and procreation. Let’s instead exercise this blessing in exclusive service to our God-given spouse.
“But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.” (Psalm 103:17-18)
Families belong together. So no more freezing embryos. No more leaving them in laboratory storage indefinitely. No more manufacturing them by the handfuls. No more pulling them apart to procure their stem cells. No more genetically engineer¬ing them in the name of scientific advancement. No more declaring them “excess” and dispatching them for experimentation. Let’s instead receive every child as a precious treasure and a special privilege.
Families belong together. So no more “no-fault” divorces. No more re¬laxing restrictions against broken homes. No more dissolving wedding bonds simply upon demand. No more cheapening nuptial promises by permitting abandonment of them at will and without good reason. No more cohabitation without matrimony. No more forsaking society’s responsibility to support and safeguard these sacred commit¬ments when they get threatened or weakened. Let’s instead strengthen and defend every one-flesh union.
Families belong together. So no more physician-assisted suicides. No more letting loved ones feel like burdens or better off dead because of their age or their ailments. No more enabling them to put themselves out of our misery. No more lazy “love” that lives and lets die. No more keeping ourselves aloof and indifferent to the suffering of others. Let’s instead marshal all the resources of community to accompany one another in addressing affliction.
Families belong together. So no more abortions. No more killing children for convenience. No more prioritizing our liberties over their rights. No more appealing to privacy or poverty or adversity or public opinion. No more staying oblivious about which contraceptives cause miscarriages. No more forsaking panicked hearts to deal with their surprise pregnancies alone. Let’s instead advocate and intervene to celebrate and save every member of the human race.
Families belong together. So no more salvation-by-works. No more as¬sessing anyone’s value according to ages or appearances or abilities. No more under¬estimating the ways God’s grace redeems lost causes and the most hopeless-looking situations. No more acting as if anybody’s history or sinfulness falls outside of His reach and rescue. No more forgetting that His will and His Word, His incarnation and His forgiveness have invested even our existences with everlasting significance. Let’s instead discover and distribute the abundant life in God’s unconditional love.
Families belong together. So no more keeping quiet. No more “minding your own business.” No more using “two kingdoms” as an excuse. No more avoiding controversial conversations just because they are difficult. No more sidestepping life issues just because they are “political matters” or “personal decisions.” No more hiding the healing light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ under a basket. No more hoarding for ourselves the abundant promises of God that those close to us so desperately desire. Let’s instead declare the sanctity of life with courage and demonstrate it with compassion.
Families belong together!
Source: www.lutheransforlife.org • info@lutheransforlife.org • 888.364.LIFE • Fall 2018 • LifeDate • page 14-15