Once upon a time...a woman asked an artist for a painting.She didn't specifically ask...but she did set up a canvas in his studio.
And the artist, you see, loved to paint. So if someone gave him the opportunity to paint, he thrilled in it. He rejoiced in it. And he painted.
A few weeks after he had begun painting, the woman heard about his work. Furious, she went to see the artist. "I didn't ask you for a painting!" she exclaimed. "I have no wall space, nowhere to put it! I wanted that canvas left blank, maybe for later, but certainly not now!" She glanced at the painting, already underway, already marked by the master artist's brushstrokes, already symbolic of hours of loving, passionate work. "I want that thing destroyed."
The artist protested. "This will be one of my finest works," he told her. "If you don't have room for it, I will find someone else to give it to, someone who will love it and appreciate its beauty."
She did not listen.
The artist was agonized. "Please," he begged her, "I love this painting. I have spent hours planning it, designing it. It is meant to be cherished." He trailed his finger over the just-dried paint. It was already beautiful; how much more beautiful could it be when it was finished!
But with a shake of her head, the woman reached out, grabbed the painting, and ripped it apart.
The artist wept.
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I'm not an artist. But I do remember a time when I was younger that I was knitting a scarf. I was very, very proud of my progress on the scarf from the first stitch onward. One day, in my carelessness, I let the needle slip out, and the entire scarf unraveled. I was most distraught.
The scarf wasn't finished yet. I could start over. I could even do it differently if I wanted to.
But even the few rows of uneven stitches represented hours of hard, shaky-fingered, careful little-girl work.
Everyone (hopefully) would sympathize with a little girl whose unfinished scarf unraveled.
We would call someone cruel who destroyed a painting whilst it was still under the artist's brush.
We would weep with someone whose novel's first pages were thrown into the fire, though the remainder had yet to be written.
Let us, then, weep for the Master Artist, the Divine Author, whose work is so often destroyed mid-brushstroke...mid-word.
It's not a baby yet, but you wouldn't dare feed a smile-less Mona Lisa to the flames.
It's not a human yet, but you wouldn't shred the first hundred pages of War and Peace and justify it by saying it's "not a book yet."
It's not finished yet, but even if it's not, what does it matter??
What does it matter?
Do you see? Do you understand?
I can in no way stand in judgment on any woman who has had an abortion. I have no idea what she has been through. No idea. But somewhere along the way, whether by herself or someone she trusted, she had to have been lied to.
She had to have been told, "It's okay...it's not finished yet."
Oh, we are all not finished yet! praise God! But may we ever see the love, the planning, the passion that went into our creation! How can we justify destroying something simply because the final touch has not been added?
Simply because it's "not done" doesn't mean it isn't already beautiful.
Simply because it's "in progress" doesn't mean it's not already indescribably precious.
I have nothing to add, except that I pray our hearts may be broken, enlightened, and move to action.
May we fight to keep the Artist's canvass under His brush.
