The other day I ran across one of those stories that just makes me — well, let me tell the story before I finish that sentence.

Here's the story: At Northern Kentucky University, a professor led 10 or so students from her Contemporary British Literature class in a vandalism raid. Their target: a display of 400 crosses commemorating victims of abortion, set up by pro-life students (with the university's permission) on a hill in front of the local Fine Arts Building. This so enraged the prof, one Sally Jacobsen, that she and her students not only ripped up the crosses but, in an extra burst of spite, scattered them to trash cans all across the area — "to make it harder," she said, for the display to be recovered.

That's the story, shorn of a few details. (For the record, the professor is facing legal charges.) Now back to my reactions to the story — and there are a couple of reactions, actually.

My first reaction is just to marvel at the whole thing. I always wonder: Do the Jacobsens of the world actually imagine they're impressing anyone, much less winning converts to their cause? Don't they know they're just making themselves look like, simply, jerks? Don't they know they're discrediting themselves and alienating people from their cause in the process? I know, I know, they have their motives, like anger or peer pressure or a pathetic craving for attention. But honestly, it's just so stupid.

Still, my chief reaction to this sort of thing isn't anger. It's nostalgia. It takes me back to a similar experience I had, which started out ugly but turned into one of the most beautiful and heartwarming experiences I've ever had.

About a decade ago, my church also put up a pro-life display of crosses, only on a larger scale: 4,000 of them on our church grounds, with a sign explaining that they signified the number of abortions in America each day. We didn't invent the display — it was already traveling the country under various names, like The Cemetery of the Innocents or (in our case) The Witness of the Crosses. All we did was add a large banner above it all emblazoned with the words Jesus Heals and Forgives. We thought that was crucial. The crosses were intended as a powerful, conscience-stirring visual reminder of God's Law. But those whose hearts were convicted needed also to hear the consolation of the Gospel.

For the 50 or so of us who put up the crosses, setting up the display took several hours. But it's easier to destroy than to build, so the next night, a group of vandals probably didn't take nearly so long to tear the whole thing down — though they found a little extra time to spray-paint our signs with the slogan "pro-choice." As far as they were concerned, the Witness of the Crosses had to end in a hurry.

Instead, the Witness of the Crosses was just beginning.

When the next day rolled around and we discovered the vandals' handiwork, we put out the word to the media, both secular (newspaper, radio, TV) and the local Christian radio station. The display was going back up the next day, we said, and though it was a weekday, any volunteers who wanted to help us on their lunch hour would be much appreciated.

They showed up — 200-plus of them. So did several media folk, once again: We even got a live TV broadcast on one noon news show. (As a spokesman for the organizers, I learned something about the pace of live TV: I had to answer four questions in about 90 seconds.) It was all very rewarding, and all of us organizers came away feeling good about the positive publicity. Maybe, we hoped, some more people would come away with a favorable view of the pro-life message, which didn't always get the best press. If that was all that happened, we would've felt it was all worth while.

But then the really rewarding stuff began.

That day, the local newspaper ran a front-page photo of one of the church members hammering a cross back into the ground. That member happened to be me. Imagine my surprise, then, to learn that shortly afterward a woman called the church looking for me — under the (mistaken ) impression that I worked there — because she'd been considering abortion and wanted someone to show her an alternative.

Happily, she ended up talking not to me but to the pastor, who was far better equipped as a counselor than I would have been.

They talked, and talked some more. And in the end, he got her to the local, Christian-run crisis-pregnancy center. I never met this woman, but from all I was told, her baby's life was saved — and, in a real sense, so was hers. I'd never felt so exhilarated. A human life! God used us — He used me — to save a life, and maybe also a soul.

I was still feeling the thrill a few days later when I was on the church grounds putting up a handful of crosses that had fallen not to vandals, but to a stiff wind. A woman driving by spotted me and pulled into the parking lot, asking if I had anything to do with the display. She had a story of her own to tell.

This woman (call her Mrs. Smith though I never knew her name) was a public school counselor who knew a girl in trouble. The girl (about 15, as I recall) was pregnant for the second time, and just as she did the previous time, she was going to have an abortion. Then she saw the Witness of the Crosses while riding by on the school bus — and she couldn't get it out of her mind.

So she went to Mrs. Smith and spilled her heart. Is it true, she asked; Does abortion really take a baby's life? As a public school counselor, Mrs. Smith wasn't supposed to comment; but as a Christian, she couldn't live with herself if she didn't speak her convictions. Yes, she said; it's true.

As it turned out, Mrs. Smith was only saying what the girl already knew deep down. I was going to get an abortion, the girl confessed, but when I saw all those crosses — did her voice break when she said it, or was it just Mrs. Smith's voice broke as she told me the story? — I just couldn't go through with it.

Mrs. Smith had already decided she knew what she had to do. She took the girl to the crisis-pregnancy center. Anyone's notion of public-school "separation of church and state" be hanged; once again, there were lives, and souls, at stake.

That made two such cases that I'd learned of, in just a few days.

And we still weren't done. Days later, I learned of a third case along similar lines: A church mate who'd written a letter to the paper about the cross incident was contacted by yet another desperate pregnant girl seeking help. He and his wife also knew what to do, and by now you know what happened: They helped the girl to the crisis pregnancy center and in the end, a third baby was born.

Three lives saved, three mothers saved. In a few days. And that's just the number I knew about! Who knows how many more were saved? If I knew of this many, I've always believed that there must have been others, perhaps lots of them.

To know that God did all that with our few hours of work is wonderful enough. How much more wonderful, though, to know how much He did with the work of the vandals.

The happy memory has stayed with me for a long time, and doubtless will far longer: For years afterward, when seeing a child playing in a park, I've often thought "for all I know, that could be one of 'ours.'" You can get a lot of joy and nourishment out of a thought like that.

The memory usually also brings another memory, a biblical one. In Genesis, Joseph is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers only to have God lift him to a position of power in Egypt, where he (enlightened by visions from the Lord) implements policies that save people from a vast famine. Encountering his now-contrite brothers later in life, he assures them he has no plans to take revenge, for he has seen the bigger picture. "You intended to harm me," he says in Gen. 50:20, "but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."

I hope some day certain vandals can hear those same words — and understand what they really mean.