Psalm 139:13-16

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

One of the biggest struggles with me is really coming face to face with the idea that ‘Life begins at conception’ and that all life should be valued.  This week, I’ve been working through the whole notion of conception and exactly when a soul is implanted and a life begins.  One of my misconceptions going into this process was that once an egg was fertilized that was it, barring any damaging external stimuli, this little guy forms into a baby.  After reading, I get the impression that fertilization is no guarentee for implantation or even ultimate survival.  At some point there are switches that get thrown that keep a zygote or blastocyst from developing (correct me if I’m wrong) and that often, there is a point where those that work survive and continue on to birth. 

Even in my limited knowledge, I’m in awe of the process that starts with a fertilized egg and how it develops into a blastocyst within 5 days and how it goes from a single cell to 100-200 cells during that same time. 

Where I get fuzzy is exactly when life begins.  If achieving fertilization is no earmark of ultimate survial are there an untold throng of fertilized eggs that are hanging out in heaven as fully developed people?  What about the status of the hundreds of thousands of embryos in cryostasis in the US?  At what point does God embody an embryo with a soul? 

These are weighty questions, indeed, but I think people that are overly preoccupied with these ideas fall in the ranks of missing the forest through the trees.  David, in Psalm 139 was taking the focus off of himself and was in awe of a powerful, soverign God.  Blastocyst wasn’t in his vocabulary as a shepard, but the soverign Yahweh was, contemplating the deeper mysteries of God’s ultimate care for him and development of him was.  I believe it should be mine.  Asking these big questions is good, but ultimately one embraces a a big grey fuzzy area that is void of clear cut answers. What is dangerous as well is that drawing a clear line at any point in this process has its own ethical issues (e.g. Life begins with a zygote?  What is human or ethical about freezing it for 10-20 years until it is ultmately disposed of or dies a lengthy death?  Life begins at birth?  You’re delusional; there’s nothing magical about bringing a baby through a mom’s vagina). 

Where do you go with that?  I believe that these are questions that are deserving of a copious amount of prayer and council, but I believe God is soverign enough to answer. Prying into the world of IVF has continually increased my reverance of a God who created an incredibly complex process and ultimately one I’ll never quite fully understand but I will endevor to honor God in.

I leave you with this.  It’s a quote from Chapter 5 of A.W. Tozer’s “The Pursuit of God”. 

“Important as it is that we recognize God working in us, I would yet warn against a too-great preoccupation with the thought. It is a sure road to sterile passivity. God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, “O Lord, Thou knowest.” Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God’s omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.”