Earth's Depths

I was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth.

 - From Psalm 139

The Psalmist is going way beyond any other effort, to describe the magic, the miracle, and the wonder of life. He leaves nothing to change. Every single life is precious, marvelous, and of great value. 

It goes way back, way before conception, even. Our cellular structure originated in the earth itself. God knows what He's doing with each of us, ages ago, when the cells that became us, were still inert organic compounds deep in the ground. 

It is so wonderful, that we can't even begin to understand it. 

This idea of "life," is something to be treated with more awe than anything else. "In the beginning, God . . . "

It's all about life - about God starting it in Genesis, and then God making it last forever, in Revelation. Christ died so that we may live, forever. And He was born so that He could die. 

If only our world-view, our philosophies, our politics, our values, our choices. . . were based on a total deference to the sacredness of life. 

I have said before, that the most selfish act in life is the sex act. But the most unselfish act is to bring a baby into the world, that we have already committed to care for and love, for the entirety of his or her life. If unselfishness is the highest plane of human dignity, then the conception of a new human life is the finest expression of it. 

Therefore, God immersed the idea of birth, into a set of trappings that divorced it from an act of sheer pleasure. We needed to frame childbirth into a practice of commitment and real love, otherwise the act of conception would diminish into a mere gratification of a momentary hunger.

Psalm 139 is a pro-life passage - - - but way beyond the intentions of the politically-motivated modern pro-life movement. Understood in its proper context, none of us come out looking particularly noble. 

Behold God's first, eternal, and all-important act: creating you, and me, deep within the depths of the earth . . . long before any of us will ever know.