For You created my innermost parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, because I am awesomely and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well…. Your eyes have seen my formless substance; and in Your book were written all the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them. (Psalm 139:13-16, NASB)
Links Players president Jeffrey Cranford is a grandfather. He told us so the other day.
Now let me tell you more. Most guys would announce it this way: “My daughter is pregnant.” That’s true when it comes to Jeff’s family and when it comes to many of you, in the past or in the present. Jeff’s daughter hasn’t “given birth” yet. The child is here; the birth is still to come.
You see, pregnancy is never only about the mother. It’s also about the child. And, you may be interested to know, it’s about the sovereignty of God.
Now, this isn’t normal fare for a Links Fellowship, but this question came up in ours recently: What happens to aborted babies? The short answer is “God knows.” But God knows a lot of things, and some of them he has revealed to us in Scripture.
In Psalm 139, David proclaimed unequivocally that life begins at conception. God is already doing his great work in the womb, weaving the little one fearfully and wonderfully, ordaining and writing the child’s days in his book.
This is the reason abortion is wrong. It is the intentional taking of an innocent life. Scripture does not specifically address abortion, but it does address the taking of someone’s life, calling it murder. I know that different contexts will govern our tone of voice when we make that case, but the truth remains. Abortion is a human act to end what God has started.
But the question in our Links Fellowship went further. Questions like these may be theologically motivated, but often they come from a hurting heart. Maybe the asker knows and loves someone who has aborted a child. To find an answer to the question, I again turn to David.
God’s sovereignty demands much of our faith, which involves choices big and small every day.In an event from his life, the son born to David and Bathsheba died when he was only seven days old. David had been told this would happen by the prophet Nathan, yet David prayed that the Lord would be gracious and the child would live. Still, David trusted God’s judgment. When the infant died, David abruptly ended his pleading: “But now he has died; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?” Then he added: “I will go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23).
“I will go to him.” In his psalms, David repeatedly anticipated eternity with God. Now he was saying that his son, too—this one too little to ever be consciously aware of God’s existence—would go to God. David knew that he would dwell in the house of the Lord forever and there be reunited with his child. If David’s words were true for a child seven days old, then they are true for a child seven, or 17, or 70, days before that. They are true for a child who dies in her mother’s womb, be the child lost spontaneously or by grievous choice.
I know a greater question remains: If God cares for the children, why would he allow them to die this way? Honestly, I do not know, except to say that I have heard the same question asked a hundred times about men and women at every stage of life. God, who is full of goodness and mercy (Psalm 136:26) and who calls us to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves (Proverbs 31:8-9), allowed even his own Son to die a merciless death. He is sovereign, which means that all that happens—even a cross for Jesus—fits his plans for his people. And when it comes to children, “the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Luke 18:16).
God’s sovereignty demands much of our faith, which involves choices big and small every day. I choose to believe that God created, and that he takes care of his creation; he takes eternal care of his children (no matter how old!) with whom he has a relationship.
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Randy Wolff
March 3, 2021
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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