“You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.” (Numbers 35:33-34, ESV)
The verses here come at the end of a passage that discusses the process for dealing with those who shed innocent blood. The shedding of innocent blood, meaning murder, is a serious issue because it pollutes and defiles the land, a land in which the Lord dwells.
I wonder what we are doing to our land. We sing the patriotic song, “America the Beautiful,” with these lyrics, “God shed His grace on thee,” Yet, every year in America we abort over one-million unborn children. As a nation, we worry about pollution through waste in our water and carbon emissions in the air. While we are concerned about pollution, do we consider that we are polluting and defiling our land by the shedding of innocent blood?
Every child from the time of conception is precious to our Lord. The psalmist explains the reason for this.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” (Psalm 139:13-14, ESV)
All life is important to our Lord, even the life of the unborn. This is because He is the creator of life and He formed man in His own image.
We ought to be concerned for our land. We ought to be concerned about the stand we take as a nation on the sanctity of human life. The Lord does not look upon our defiling of the land through the shedding of innocent blood lightly.
Renewing the Heart 