Words Over the Womb

 

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Yet you brought me safely from my mother’s womb and led me to trust you at my mother’s breast.  I was thrust into your arms at my birth.  You have been my God from the moment I was born.

Let the rich of the earth feast and worship.  Bow before him, all who are mortal, all whose lives will end as dust.  Our children will also serve him.  Future generations will hear about the wonders of the Lord.  His righteous acts will be told to those not yet born.  They will hear about everything he has done.  Psalm 22:9-10, 29-31

Our Psalm this morning is an appropriate picture in the days leading to Easter.  It is Messianic, graphically-so, considering the middle verses’ depiction of one in severe pain and dehydration, something any human would experience when pinned by nails to a cross. ^{(see Psalm 22:11-18)}

But something else cast a large shadow across my mind as I read the entire Psalm. I saw the promise of God’s Word to those in the womb, particularly those who will never see the cradle, those yet not born, whose lives are cut short in abortion.  This Psalm casts a mantle of responsibility over those who claim the name of Christ to speak words over the womb to the next generation – words of reconciliation, healing, and comfort in God’s name.

I have often been reminded of the tenuous nature of the faith once-delivered to the saints, for which we, according to our Lord’s brother, Jude, must earnestly contend.  Some (or most) of that “contending” is passing the faith along, like a baton, handed to the next runner in a relay race.  The danger of dropping the baton is always most vulnerable in the handoff, as the finishing runner stretches to offer it to the one who will carry it in the next leg of the race.  To drop the baton is to forfeit the race.  Words over the womb are a sacred promise we speak to faithfully hold the Gospel as a womb faithfully holds the unborn.

King David, writer of this precious Psalm, recounted God’s faithfulness in the delivery from his mother’s womb to learning in childhood of God’s goodness.  David would not live a perfect life, but living that life as a child of faith was not in question.  And David, as his forbears did, passed along the faith to the next generation, Solomon.  And so on.

We live in a generation conditioned to believe that abortion is a right granted by our laws.  That lethal legality is affirmed nearly one million times a year in this country, thousands of souls for whom life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not granted as a right.

About 50 years ago I was sitting across the table from a couple in their thirties, helping them to apply for an insurance policy.  As part of the application I was recording both of their medical histories.  In asking the wife about previous hospital stays she said, without expression, abortion.  Thinking I’d mis-heard what she said, I asked her to repeat it.  She said, abortion…end the pregnancy.  I knew the Supreme Court had made it the law of the land.  I knew abortion clinics existed.  I assumed it wasn’t a conspiracy theory.  I just had never met a living, breathing person who became the face of reality for what that meant.  I wrote the words on the application, but it was like jabbing the pen point into my eye.

Admittedly, I knew nothing of that couple’s struggle, and the why of their decision.  I only sensed the tragedy of a soul denied his or her first breath.  And how the mantle of parenthood was rejected, never speaking words of hope, reconciliation, and healing over the womb.

I do know that moment was the point in time when my heart surrendered to preserving the sanctity of life in whatever I do.

For You Today

God said “thou shalt not kill”.  It’s that simple.  God alone is the judge of what is right and wrong, and that extends far past the law of the land, all the way to the thoughts and intents of the mind and heart.  It may not happen in this generation that abortion is returned to the abyss, but this generation can turn towards God in obedience, and march toward the day when words of life – not death – are spoken over the womb. 

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com    Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©