There is a quietness in the morning, before sleepy voices greet me, where I have the opportunity in the stillness to dwell on hope. As little feet scurry down I breathe a moment and pray for these little boys in my care, I pray for the men they will, by God’s grace, become; and I find peace in the truth that each morning the promises of God continue to ring out. With each sunrise, each breath taken, each heart beating, and each new person created upon conception we are reminded that God brings life.

In the wake of the nationwide horror at Planned Parenthood’s butchery of human life, there is much to grieve. I grieve the 11.5-week-old boy who’s death was more rejoiced than his short life. I grieve the mother who was convinced by the lie that her hope was in the murder of her son. I grieve the father who may have been perhaps pleading life or unknowing, perhaps absent, complicit, or abusing. I grieve the countless men and women who are both perpetrators and victims of this corruption. I grieve the millions of babies who have been the victims of this legalized genocide with more fall-out than any other genocide in world history. I grieve the workers in Planned Parenthood who’s morality is seared to oblivion by the blood on their hands. I grieve the many who still stand with the corruption of Planned Parenthood. I grieve our country that seems to be more interested in what will entertain and outrage them next, instead of pursuing truth and justice.

But even as I grieve, I hope. Because the Lord’s lovingkindness is new each morning. Because those little feet that sweetly greet me in the morning are a picture of hope, not because they are the future, but because they live.

The Planned Parenthood wretchedness is one more ploy of Satan, the enemy of God, who loves death. This murder of our children is not a new tactic in human history, we have merely sterilized our language to ease our conscience. Satan has, and always will entice us with death, and with each corruption justified, and each murder excused, he wins.

But only temporarily.

Because God offers us life eternal. He brought it in a tiny baby, one who was conceived by his Spirit in the midst of another genocide of children. I don’t want us to miss this, he was conceived, this baby within Mary was Christ at conception; life, value, incarnation, at conception. And that tiny baby grew to be the man who hung shamefully on a cross, bearing the weight of this world of death, and rising again in glory, crushing death beneath his heel.

And each “product of conception”, each of those babies, is a slap in the face to Satan, because they are life, new life. And in each of those babies we are reminded that Jesus conquered all, God is still making new life. And he makes new life in us still.

Because for each of those mothers who sacrificed the life within her for hope in something that only produced more death, there is grace, and in the blood of Jesus they can be given new life too. For each father who abandons his responsibility as a father, there is an opportunity for a new life in reliance on the perfect Father God. And within the heart of each redeemed Christian there is new life that produces feet that go into this world of death and bring instead a fountain of living water.

The world is in the business of death. But God? He’s in the business of life. He makes new life within a woman’s womb, and he makes new life within the heart of every repentant sinner.

So these young boys I’m raising, they are a reminder of the life in Christ. And I pray for these little boys, that they will grow to understand that they are born into a world of death, and only Christ can free them from it. I pray that they see how wretched we all are without his grace. I pray that they will grow in this knowledge of the grace they’ve been given and it will motivate them to value and love every single person because they are human and that is all that necessitates value. I pray that they will lead with a heart that serves those who can give them nothing in return, that they will use whatever strength they have to defend and protect those who are weaker, oppressed, and marginalized. I pray that they will be men of grace, justice and truth.

And I pray this for The Church. Because we too, by our existence as those who have peace with God through Jesus’ blood, we are further witness to Satan’s loss because of Christ’s victory. We too must remember the grace we have been given and it must motivate us to uphold each person’s value as image-bearers of God, which supersedes any age, race, capabilities, or location. The grace of the cross must motivate us to seek justice and truth, and to share this spectacular grace we know with every person we meet.

We live in a dying world, one that is corrupt, profiting and rejoicing in death. But we have hope in the God who defeated death with a scarlet river, and we who have been washed in it must share that hope with a world that teeters on the edge of insanity and despair as it tears itself apart.