Does Chalk Cause Controversy?

by Kristina Garza

It sure does!  This Thursday was National ProLife Chalk Day, and the Campus Outreach Team left their mark on the sidewalks of the two abortion mills nearest our office.  While it doesn’t seem like much, our time chalking caused significant conflict!

Within an hour of leaving Planned Parenthood, we got a call from a sidewalk counselor that the employees and security guards were on edge.  We had stirred things up!  The sidewalk counselor asked that we stop causing tension with our chalk, but we know the problem isn’t us!  It’s the industry that’s killing babies and destroying women’s souls.  We want the workers and security guards to be uncomfortable!  Nobody should feel comfortable standing by while babies are being murdered where they work.

We are activists.  Our job is to make people uncomfortable about abortion, and force the public out of their complacency.  In fact, if Planned Parenthood does not feel tension by our presence on the sidewalk, then we are probably doing something wrong!

We know of at least one woman who was not sold an abortion because of our chalk.  The young couple had parked down the street and noticed our chalked messages as they walked up to the Planned Parenthood driveway.  Since they paused to read the messages, Lauren was able to talk to them and offer them information about the pregnancy resource center down the street.  They gladly took the information and left!

As we were talking about the “tension” we created afterward, Mary Rose made the statement in the graphic above: “Jesus wrote in the dirt with his finger.  If He had chalk, He would have used it!” We are called to be like Christ when we are out on the sidewalk.  Christ was loving, compassionate, and forgiving... but He also told the truth, which made people uncomfortable -- so uncomfortable that sometimes they just left. 

But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Again he bent down and wrote on the ground.  And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders.  So he was left alone with the woman before him.  John 8:7-9

We pray that by our showing the truth - on the sidewalks in front of abortion mills AND campuses - people will be made uncomfortable enough with abortion to walk away from the influences of the culture of death.