The comments have inundated my social media feed since the State of the Union Address in January. About the women in white. Refusing to stand, to clap, to show any type of response (other than what appeared to be annoyance) at the President’s statement regarding his promise to the protection of unborn life. It seems unreal to so many of us. How could they? Why would they? What has happened to our country that women, of all people, can support the very death of children whom they are intended to bear?

Lawlessness. The answer is lawlessness. Think with me about what Jesus is saying to his disciples in this verse. As he gives them a prophetic view of what is to come, he says that lawlessness will increase. Not a newsflash: the increase of lawlessness is here. There is no regard for right or wrong. When governors are allowing doctors to murder and vetoing bills that would save babies born alive after failed abortions, it’s a free-for-all for sure. Within our government, an institution ordained by God, meant to protect our lives and our liberties, and the lives and liberty of those in the womb yet to be born, we see a state of utter chaos because of lawlessness.

What does Jesus say will happen when lawlessness abounds? He makes a simple statement: “the love of many will grow cold.” Now, before the 2019 address, I would have read this verse and generalized the “many” as, perhaps, people who don’t love God. Or, serial killers. Or, the evilest of all evil. Of course there are those people whose love has grown cold. But not—let me repeat—but not–a group of women who look like me, who represent my neighbor, who just as well might be the teacher at the nearby school or the business owner of the local coffee shop downtown. These women? Their love, grown cold? And, given the context of the situation, the question of course is: Their love of who has grown cold? The answer is–the unborn children.

Most of us cannot even begin to understand. In our perplexity, we desperately need discernment. The lens of the Bible gives it. Note with me what the Word of God has to say about women and life because, quite frankly, it is beyond the eye-brow raising I witnessed during the President’s address; it is absolutely jaw-dropping. The primary and most fundamental truth that the Bible proclaims about women and life is this: they are meant to go together.

In this one verse we can observe two references to the truth that women and life were designed to accompany one other. Foremost, the obvious: the first woman was referred to as the “mother of all living.” Knowing that a mother is a female parent, that the very word, “mother,” describes a woman in relation to her child or children, we understand that Eve was the mother of all the living before she even was found with child[i]. It was her destiny, given by God and verbalized by Adam immediately after her creation.

The second and perhaps more profound reference is less noticeable and is found in the man’s choice of a name for his wife. He chose Eve. Eve’s name literally renders “life” or “living” in the Hebrew.[ii] Eve is Chavah. Eve means life.

Let that sink in. Eve is the first woman and her very existence equals life. How so? Physically, she was created, was fashioned, to do something that her male counterpart could not do, and that is, give life. Her body could carry, sustain and birth the life of another human being. Emotionally, she would be equipped with a nature that would nurture that life. And spiritually, her offspring would eventually produce the Seed (that is Christ) who would crush the evil one and give eternal life (see Genesis 3:15). Eve was, at the core of her very being, a life-giver.

I just have to pause at this picture painted in my mind, this Polaroid of women in white, sitting in those chambers with those blank, frozen, emotionless faces. And as I pause, I take note of a burning reality: When we observe women of our day reveling in and supporting the killing of human life through the evil act of abortion, there is but only one appropriate caption for the portrait: “life-takers”.

And it is a sad, horrific thing to behold. Those women, and the men and women who follow them, represent an age-old problem with sin that says, “we know what’s best for us” so “let us do what we want to do.” And all the while, because sin distorts and destroys, women are being deprived (as is every single one of the babies that will be lost because of their sinful propaganda) of the blessings that come from God’s purpose for mankind to value, promote and create . . . life. This, we admit, is a heart-wrenching and seemingly hopeless situation . . . one that demands our weeping.

The women in white chose to wear that particular color because it has long represented the women’s suffrage movement. Interestingly enough, just weeks after the Presidential Address, pro-life activists organized what was called, The National Day of Mourning 2019, in which thousands of women (and men) across the nation chose to wear—you guessed it–black. A picture again, but this time of women on their knees in response to the millions of lives that are being taken before those lives are even given a chance to exist outside the womb.

In many ways, these women in black were fulfilling another prophecy from the Bible, found in the book of Jeremiah in Chapter 9, verses 17-18 and 20-21. It reads like this:

Thus says the Lord of hosts:
17 “Consider, and call for the mourning women to come;
send for the skillful women to come;
18 let them make haste and raise a wailing over us,
that our eyes may run down with tears
and our eyelids flow with water.

20 Hear, O women, the word of the Lord,
and let your ear receive the word of his mouth;
teach to your daughters a lament,
and each to her neighbor a dirge.
21 For death has come up into our windows;
it has entered our palaces,
cutting off the children from the streets
and the young men from the squares.”

Mourning women, coming and calling for a repentant nation. With eyes full of tears, listening to the Word of God and even teaching their daughters to lament over the sin and death that overtook them. They were acknowledging that the “death has come up into (their) windows” because the people had strayed so far. What were they to do? How were they to respond? They—the women, the life-givers–were to weep. To be women in black.

So it is with our day. We need women to respond, to turn to the God who can redeem and restore the way in which life is viewed and make it, once again, valued in the hearts of the people. We need women to choose. But not choose to take life in their own hands with the choice for abortion, but to choose which garments they will wear.

Will it be black or white? Because, my friends, this truly is a black and white issue.

For many in our nation abortion is a gray area and an ill-defined topic that the culture at large would want every person, every voter, to get lost in. The language with its terminology and the legislation with its parties, indeed, contribute to the uncertainty for those who might stand on the fence. But as I, personally, break it all down to these two opposing pictures engraved in my mind, the one of women in white with cold hearts and the one of women in black with broken hearts, the gray becomes crystal clear.

It’s truly a matter of being a life-taker or a life-giver. One path results in death. The other results in life. One results in a life of consequence from sin and evil and the other harvests a life of blessing bestowed from the Creator. The distorted picture we see of women grown cold can only be replaced with clarity that comes from godly conviction. When women dressed in white are able to say, “this is wrong” and “let’s live the way we were designed to live,” while turning to the righteous, forgiving Savior, then and only then will all of life, which was intended to be loved, be loved. Then and only then will what was meant to go together, be together and remain together.

There is a call to heed.

I choose to be a woman in black, one who stands in the gap by mourning over the reality of the insurmountable death that permeates our culture. I will not be on the fence. I will be on my face. Asking the God of all Creation to come and change our land, to change minds and to change hearts.

I pray that there are many other women who choose the same. Neighbors, teachers, business owners, women of all walks of life. And as we look to Almighty God who alone has the power to turn this country around, for whom shall we pray? The babies, of course. The mothers of those babies, absolutely. The legacies of generations to come that may be squandered at the altar of the present–Lord, have mercy. And we pray for state representatives and all who follow their agenda. That these individuals might ultimately come to realize that their white clothes are but a disguise, for that which their garments represent is a cause that facilitates unbelievable death, death that deserves to be mourned over in pantsuits and dresses of black.

[ii] https://biblehub.com/topical/c/chavah.htm