Recently MPs voted to decriminalise abortion in the UK. The image used in that article is striking, more profound than perhaps was intended. When I looked at it, all I could see was this:

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. 

But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them,  I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. 

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Life in one hand, death in the other. And sadly, we still choose death. Our country is so off base it seems we no longer know which is which. This is still the verdict: Light has come into the world, but we love darkness instead of light because our deeds are evil.

And as I write this, the death dealers have chosen to end the frail and aged as well, in the same way as as they chose to snuff out the life of the unborn.

This is the time for the Church, the true Church, to stand up. Satan would choose to paint this country in the greys and beiges of evil. We have a better palette – in the light of Christ, we can paint in vibrant beauty a picture that will give hope to the hopeless, value to those who feel they have no value, purpose to the purposeless.

If we will stand up, and not seek to camouflage ourself in the same dismal rainment, hiding away in timidity and fear. The nation needs prophetic voices, unencumbered by the need to dissemble, as if light had some kind of fellowship with darkness.

Sing praises to the Lord, enthroned in Zion; proclaim amongst the nations what He has done. For He who avenges blood remembers; he does not ignore the cry of the afflicted.
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The nations have fallen into the pit they have dug; their feet are caught in the net they have hidden. The Lord is known by his justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands.

The wicked return to the grave, all the nations that forget God. But the needy will not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the afflicted ever perish.

Arise, O Lord, let not man triumph; let the nations be judged in your presence. Strike them with terror, o Lord; let the nations know they are but men.
Psalm 9 v11-20

This is the judgment that is on us. Only those in Christ will remain; not in their own strength but in His.

Though it is not as if we require a massive judgment of God, for we are the self-executors of our own judgment. The tree is rotten to the core, and cannot stand.

We don’t just need a quiet revival, we need a burning down of Holy fire to eviscerate the haunts of darkness enveloping this land. And the truth is, one way or another, He will do this. There is no darkness so deep, no blackness so thick and cloying, that the light of Christ cannot pierce.

But to some that piercing will be joy, to others despair. There is no middle ground, there never has been.

Now is the day to choose – life in all its fulness, or death and destruction. And the Lord still says: choose life, that it may go well with your soul.