Take ten college students, stick them in a 30-foot RV and send them on a three-month walk across America from the Pacific Ocean to Washington, D.C., and what do you get?

No, not another voyeuristic TV hit special, but Crossroads, a powerful group of teenage disciples in modern day U.S.A.

Crossroads began six years ago as a few students from Stuebenville University setting out across this country, attempting to raise concern about the escalating problem of abortion, a procedure some government officials said would be kept safe and rare. Coupled with the growing specter of euthanasia, capital punishment, mass murders and other forms of violence, abortion forms the heart of what Pope John Paul II is calling a “Culture of Death.”

Today, there are now 20 or more young people in two walks — one through the north and one through the south. They continue their attempt to raise awareness of this silent holocaust and the reality of its horror, seeking to turn the hearts of individuals back to the loving Father, giver of all life, seeking to re-establish a “Culture of Life.”

This past weekend they walked through Georgia, and I joined them from midnight to 6 a.m., walking from Suwanee to Gainesville. Along the way we prayed for the land we were walking through and the people living on that land, that they would come to know the immense value of every human life.

The following day we rested long enough to go back down into Atlanta to pray outside the Atlanta Surgi Center, an abortion mill on Spring Street that specializes in late term abortion. It was a beautiful day that began on a hopeful note, as the first girl who entered the clinic exited before her boyfriend could park the car, and pronounced that there was “no way” she was going to do this. But soon things settled into their normal routine, with women entering with greater frequency, and leaving in gut-wrenching pain.

Often times those who promote abortion speak of the “options” they make the individual woman aware of so that she can make her own decision. However, I know that the “counselors” inside were trying to convince the women, in any way possible, that either this “thing” inside them was not a child, or was somehow so deformed or would bring problems so great, that he or she should not have to endure the difficulty of such a life. Many former abortion providers testify to this fact.

But in an attempt to curb my anger at this murder of the innocent, I prayed that the Lord would show me the true intention of the hearts of this clinical staff, which I might have been totally misjudging. Not 15 minutes later, as we continued to kneel across the street in prayer, a young woman came down the street looking for the clinic, with a sister or friend at her side — carrying a car seat with a small infant inside!

Immediately my interest was piqued, and I watched as they climbed the steps to enter. No sooner had they reached the door than the policeman on duty stopped the mother and said, “You can't bring that in here.”

It was against the law of the clinic to bring in a living, breathing baby outside of the womb. In a swift and curt moment, the hearts of the staff had been revealed. They knew exactly what they were doing, but did not want the mothers waiting to have to confront the awful truth, a truth they had stifled their consciences to serve. The presence of a living, breathing baby child was just too much for them to bear.

Crossroads has gone on. They have a long way to go to get to D.C. by Aug. 10. But the problem is still here. We have a cancer within us that no ultrasound or X-ray can expose, but that the brief statement of an officer revealed with harsh reality. We who stand by idly ignoring it will suffer the loss no less, as the hand suffers the loss of the heart.

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