How can we respond with compassion, justice, and love in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade? Is this ruling cause for celebration or for grief?
I return to the prayer Jesus taught his disciples:
Our Father in heaven, holy is your name.
Father to the fatherless, defender of widows and orphans, God who comes among us and loves the poor and needy and scared and vulnerable, you are all goodness and love and compassion.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
This prayer feels impossible and unrealistic. In a world that is broken and can be cruel, in a world of injustice, how can we be people whose lives point to your goodness and love and compassion? I pray for fewer abortions and fewer reasons for abortions. I pray for social policies that support and protect women and children and make abortion unnecessary rather than illegal.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Help us to trust you for this day. Give the women who are feeling desperate today what they need for today. Give the ones of us who aren’t feeling desperate the willingness to care for those who are.
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Forgive us for being a society that spends money on building up arsenals and fails to provide funding for education and health care, for being a society that reduces taxes on the rich and allows children to go hungry. Forgive us for failing to value the lives of children with disabilities. Forgive us for our failures to care for the ones among us who you say represent you most. The hungry, the imprisoned, the poor.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
We want to walk with you on a path of justice and truth and goodness and love, but we are so easily led astray by convenience and entertainment and sentimentalism. Give us the wisdom to recognize the lies of our culture and turn towards your truth. Help us to love as you love.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
More with Amy Julia:
- The Ambiguities of Abortion
- Roe v. Wade: Questions to Ask About the Supreme Court’s Draft
- Abortion and People With Disabilities
- Texas’s Abortion Law and Down Syndrome
If you haven’t already, you can subscribe to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Goodreads, and you can subscribe to my Love Is Stronger Than Fear podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
