Where God Takes Me

Sunday I preached on the good Samaritan and loving your neighbor.

This morning while taking my walk I crossed paths with a neighbor who has recently lost his wife. I already saw him right after she died, on my street, which was amazing as well. I had been wondering if he is still working in the cemetery where I walk, and today he was driving a tractor cleaning the roads. So that answered my question, and I was able to talk to him about his grief.

This encounter made me late to lunch with some supporters of Roger's ministry, but seemed like a good example of not passing by the person in need, as the priest does in the good Samaritan story.

Then on my way back from lunch I saw another neighbor from my church I have been meaning to text since Sunday but hadn't yet. Good timing because he was leaving town and I know to pray for his trip and we set up an appointment for Sunday.

Next I had to take a young woman from church to get her birth control shot. She needs this, she is already raising three children with no resources, and her current boyfriend is not their father. As I drove her to the appointment, I didn't realize we were going to Planned Parenthood.

I had kind of a visceral reaction to having to go in the building. Years ago I accompanied a friend for an abortion, and I'll never forget the MARRIED woman who after aborting her baby said, "That was easy, why does anyone have children?" Although I would have not chosen an abortion personally, I could understand my friend choosing one at that point in her young life, but I could not understand that people who were married would be irresponsible enough not to use birth control then to abort an inconvenient baby, and probably do it again.

Now here I was, across the hall from the "Surgical Center." Next to me in the clinic room lay magazines, in particular, Seventeen. How sad that so many teens are sexually active and either want abortions or require birth control. I prayed while sitting there, not quite sure why God put this experience in my day, but wanting to be obedient. May God use even this for God's glory.