When my wife was thirteen weeks pregnant with our first son, the doctor offered to perform an abortion. He made this suggestion repeatedly throughout the next twelve weeks. Because of complicating factors he was concerned that the baby might be born with brain damage or other potential defects. Was the burden of what we as parents and our child might have to bear worth it all, worth any of it?
A talk show host recently spent close to five minutes denouncing the illegal hunting of certain animals, describing with careful detail the slain carcass of one of them, and demeaning and attacking the hunter. And, yet, he is ready and willing to joke about abortion. A prime time talk show can cost between $1.5 and $2.5 million dollars a week. My math skills are poor, and, sure, there are lot’s of details involved, but that’s a minimum of $25,000 per minute. How much money is spent talking about one dead animal? Roughly $125,000. How much on millions of dead babies?
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5)
Before the womb God knew Jeremiah. It’s not that God knew some information about him, like his name, eye color, height and weight, but that he knew him intimately, closely. How can this be? Before Jeremiah was conceived, God was personally committed to him.
In the womb God formed Jeremiah. “Your eyes saw my unformed substance” (Psalm 139:16), which God intended to bring to completeness, to finish what he’d begun. To be formed in the womb is to be “fearfully and wonderfully made” – striking, remarkable, outside of the power of human comprehension – “made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.” (Psalm 139:13-15) The image of God is given in the womb (Genesis 1:26; James 3:9). When did God become "flesh" in Jesus Christ (John 1:14)? In the womb.
In the womb God consecrated Jeremiah. “in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:16) Before Jeremiah was born, God already had a purpose and a plan for him. His days were already counted, given, but not simply as a quantity. Within each of those days all of Jeremiah’s troubles and needs were also already accounted for. The past and present and future are an instant to God. He sees all of time from beginning to end. The past is the past to us, but to him it is the present. He gathers every day into the next, accomplishing his purpose, completing his plan. To be set apart before birth is to give great significance and meaning to life after birth.
Outside the womb God would be with Jeremiah. The creating, consecrating, and calling of Jeremiah were each a deliberate, sustained work of God. Jeremiah was to be a prophet, and though he would one day curse the day he was born, wishing he never was (Jeremiah 20:14-18), he could never be unborn, because from before birth to after death, life is in God’s mind, God’s heart, God’s hand.
Jesus said, “When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.” (John 16:21) Delivered whom? The baby, a human being. This human being comes into the world; before they come into the world they are a human being known by God.
Joshua came into this world at 32 weeks, and spent two weeks in pre-natal care. Today he is a teenager, healthy (with none of the feared complications), a lover of history, and wearing (most of) his father’s clothes.
Dear Christian, we, the church, must not only fight for the lives of unborn babies, but we must also care for them after they’re born (through adoption, fostering, caring for single mothers, mentoring programs, etc.). Because if God knows them before the womb, then the mystery and value of their life is never a mistake, or a burden, or an inconvenience. It is a miracle. The gift of existence.
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