012474 cn Life Forms Matter

By JOSEPH BREIG

From time to time, I have heard it alleged that the Scriptures have nothing to say to us concerning the beginning of human life. For some of the quotations that follow, I am indebted to a man whose address is a penitentiary in a Midwestern state.

Pslams 139, 111: '-Truly you have formed my inmost being: you knit me in my mother's womb ... My soul also you knew full well: nor was my frame unknown to you, when I was made in secret..."

Jeremiah 1, 4-5: "The word of the Lord came to me thus: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you ~ before you were born I dedicated you. a prophet to the nations I appointed you."

Job 31, 15: "Did not He who made me in the womb make him? Did not the same One fashion us before our birth?"

Ecclesiastes 11, 5: "Just as you know not how the breath of life fashions the human frame in the mother's womb, so you know not the work of God which he is accomplishing in the universe. "

"God  created man is his image in the divine image he created
him: male and female he created them. "

Luke 1, 30, 31: "The angel went on to say to her, Do not fear. Mary, you have found favor with God. You shall conceive and bear a son..."

Luke 1. 36: "Know that Elizabeth your kins woman has conceived a son in her old age...

Luke 1, 41-44: "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leapt in her Womb. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and cried out in a loud voice: Blest. are you among women and blest is the fruit of your womb. But who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me? The moment your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby leapt in my womb for joy. "

Perhaps the most profoundly instructive of all those passages is Ecclesiastes: "Just as you know not how the breath of life fashions the human frame in the mother's womb..."

Today we do know, thanks to such modern sciences as genetics and microbiology. We can watch the new image and likeness of God growing and developing.

In the past, some people have mistakenly speculated that perhaps the body might be in the process of formation for some time, and then "God breathes a soul into it.- They had it backward. The life that is present forms matter into a body for itself. With conception, life is at work "fashioning the human frame."