Will work for food....and life.

Earlier this week we got an email from our home group leaders who were looking for volunteers to serve at a fundraising banquet for the Brazos Valley Coalition. Craig had softball scheduled for that night but I said I could help out. I didn't really know what I was signing up for but they said dinner was included so I figured, why not?

They didn't have many details but Wednesday afternoon when I received another email from the Coalition for life saying I needed black pants and a white shirt. Luckily for me, I happened to have both of those items. Unluckily for me, the blank pants had been sitting in my closet unworn for 2 years because they needed to be hemmed. So Wednesday night I frantically learned how to hem. And I had to do a good job because the only closet color thread I had was brown. At this point, I really wanted to just bail on the whole thing and go watch Craig's game. Especially since I still didn't really know what I would exactly I would be doing and I am a big fan of "a game plan."

But Thursday afternoon I received an email from another couple in our home group, sharing the news that their baby in the womb is a girl. Included was a couple clips of the ultrasound video. Just seeing that little one, still 5 months to go before she's born, moving and seeming to talk (or yawn, either way, her mouth was sure moving a lot), made me realize that this was important. I am passionately pro-life, but I feel like I don't get many opportunities to live that out in my life and this was my chance.

So I showed up and it was chaotic. They had all the servers, none of us professionals, assigned to colored zones according to a big chart on the wall. As we set out cake and drinks before the people arrived, we realized that while it was a nice idea, the chart wasn't correct. It has two many columns and not enough rows so some people were "fighting" over tables while other tables didn't have servers. Then they ran out of salad and people in plastic gloves were running around stealing lettuce leaves to scrape together a few more plates mere minutes before guests were let in.

But they were let in and ready or not, we took our places. Then a minister got up to say grace and the whole atmosphere in the room. Matthew 18:20 says where two or three are gathered, He is there with us. I realized that I was standing in a room with not just two or three people , but over 1500 people that wanted to make a difference in the lives of women and children in our community. 1500 people willing to take action. There were signs on some of the tables and you could see the different groups, denominations and organizations that were standing for the same thing. I think it hit a lot of us at once as the room just seemed to get calm. It was pretty powerful.

Somehow we manged to get food served to all 1500 people and then we hurried back to the kitchen to eat our food so we could go back to listen to the main speaker, Gov. Huckabee. His talk was pretty good but the statement that hit me the most was one I have heard before:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The second chapter in one of Huckabee's books* is "Is there something about created equal that you don't understand?" I wonder.






*None of which I have read, so I'm not endorsing. They might be good, they might be bad, I have no way of knowing. He just mentioned the chapter title and I found it thought provoking.