Last week in my blog we were considering the question, “who are we?” We saw that how we understand our life has a lot to do with how we view our origins and whether we are the product of evolution or the product of a personal God who has created us in His image and likeness. Holding to the biblical view that we are created by God to fulfill a purpose that includes having a personal relationship with Him through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, we understand that all of life is sacred. I appreciate it so much Tony Dungy’s comments at the Right to Life rally last week where he was speaking about how all of life stood still when the defensive player on the Buffalo Bills made a tackle, three weeks ago on Monday night, that resulted in his heart-stopping. All of life came to a screeching halt as the game ended up being canceled and all the fans were probably refunded the cost of their tickets. Millions of dollars in advertising and many other expenses were laid aside because one player’s life was in great jeopardy. Tony Dungy used that as an illustration of how valuable each life is.
We see in Scripture this most amazing description of the formation of human life in the mother’s womb described by David in Psalm 139 where we read, “For You formed me in my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they were written, the days fashion for me, when as yet there were none of them,” (Ps.139:13-16 NKJV). The first word in this paragraph –“for”-connects what David is saying in the previous verses, where he’s speaking about God knowing us in the darkness. There is no place where God is not a present help to His children. God is the author of life and even before we are born, He is shaping and molding us, and He is at work in the secret place. The knitting that David describes in the womb is God’s sovereign superintendency over the whole process of reproduction. God’s power is evident in the creation of each individual life. He covers us and knits us together in the womb.
David describes us as being “fearfully and wonderfully made”, which results in him breaking out in praise and adoration for his great Creator. David is almost describing to us a divine ultrasound that God revealed to him. Because we are created in the image of God then all of life is intrinsically and profoundly valuable. There is no life that is unimportant, and David was justly astonished as he considered the beauty of creation and the gift of life. He would have us know that he was not getting carried away with his own writing but is in fact under deep conviction at the core of his soul, that God’s works are marvelous beyond compare.
In verse 15 David speaks of being “skillfully wrought” in the womb. This carries the idea of embroidery and suggests veins and arteries. God gave David a picture inside the womb as he is writing this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as he does so many other times in the book of Psalms. God’s depth of insight far exceeds anything else, as David recognizes it is
God who formed him in the lower parts of the earth. David refers to his “frame” as not being hidden from God, which refers to his skeletal and unformed body in the womb as an embryo. The question should be asked if God created each unborn child, why do some pregnancies end in miscarriages and others with the child born with birth defects? Can I suggest to you that God uses painful difficulties many times to draw us closer to Himself, so that we may experience His grace and strength. In the New Testament, we read of experiencing the fellowship of Christ suffering (Phil.3:10), in the midst of our greatest pain. Loving unconditionally is the greatest manifestation of Christ’s love that we can demonstrate.
Please understand that God has created and designed you to be in a relationship with Himself through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He has done everything that He can to make that possible and when we call out to the Lord Jesus, He will meet us at our deepest point of need. Let us be rejoicing in the fact that God has designed us and made us in a most incredible fashion. Also be aware of the fact that He’s not finished with us yet, but “that He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil.1:6 NKJV).
All praise to our great Savior,
Pastor Rich Sivo