By: The Rev. Victor Lee Austin
Before entering the promised land, Moses instructs the people to give thanks to God when they harvest the fruit of the land. This thanksgiving is to begin with “A wandering Aramean was my father,” and it is to include a remembrance of their harsh treatment, affliction, and bondage-in short, a summary of their captivity. And then: “we cried to the Lord . . . and the Lord heard our voice, and saw our affliction . . . ; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”
The deliverance of the children of Israel from their oppressors has given hope to people in every generation who, reckoning themselves among the children of Abraham (the wandering Aramean), see and feel the awfulness of evil, perhaps in their own affliction, perhaps in the affliction of others. It is right for people who recognize the awfulness of abortion to voice these ancient words anew, on behalf of all the victims (not only the lost children, but often mothers, fathers, siblings, communities), to cry “to the Lord the God of our fathers,” and to ask him to hear “our voice” and to see “our affliction, our toil, and our oppression” and to bring us out “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” Of course, as we are called, so will we engage, with such money and love and truth and alternatives as we can muster. But above all, we do so with hope: that the God who saved the children of Israel will act with an outstretched arm also to save all children and bring us into a new land where we can all flourish together, rendering thanks for all his mighty deeds.