Groups of pro-life people who publicly demonstrate against abortion receive various reactions, both positive and negative, from passersby. One such reaction is the advice, "Go home and mind your own business!"
"Mind your own business." That's interesting advice, isn't it? Actually, it could make life a whole lot easier. We could go home and forget about people who are homeless and starving. That's their problem, we might say. We only need to mind our own business. We could forget about the unemployed, the depressed, the lonely. After all, we're only minding our own business. We would no longer have to worry about drug dealers or child abusers, or about vandals and arsonists. We wouldn't have to think about people with AIDS or about nations at war. . . We could forget about it all, and just mind our own business.
Actually, it's a very old piece of advice. After Cain killed his brother Abel, at the beginning of human history, he said to God, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
The answer to that is YES. We Christians have a nobler business to mind than "our own." Wherever and however our brothers and sisters are suffering, that is OUR business. Today, our most defenseless brothers and sisters are babies in the womb, and some 4400 of then a day are being snuffed out by abortion. Their mothers are victims, too, because they aren't being given the help they need to care for their children. Abortion also harms them, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.
If we love the babies, and if we love the mothers, then this IS our business. Maybe it's time to stop listening to the easy advice of Cain, and to follow instead the challenging teaching of Christ, "This is my Commandment: love one another as I have loved you." It's time to say a strong "NO" to abortion, and a "YES" to the real needs of both mother and child. This is the business of the Christian. This is the business of love.
Amen.