Chandra White-Cummings
Day 16: His First Home
Question for you: when you think about the life, ministry, and person of Jesus Christ, what does your mind naturally focus on? Do you mostly think about the miracles He performed, or does the resurrection captivate your attention? For some of us perhaps our thoughts go to the conversations He had with the religious and political leaders of His day; there were some doozies. I wonder how many of us give sustained thought to His birth, more specifically His conception? I know we highlight the incarnation in December, but do we ever really give much thought to the fact that He grew and developed in the womb of a woman, what Randolph Sly refers to today as 'the first home of the whole human race"?
Our Lord and Savior began His life here on earth within the bodily confines of a woman. That's startling to me to think about. The casual view we so often have these days of conception has reduced the womb to an incidental fact of sexual life, and minimized the life within it. Birth and pregnancy have become so politicized that we've become accustomed to detaching ourselves from the beauty and wonder of a conception, as evidenced by our focus on technical terms and medical-ese. It's inconceivable to think of someone reaching into Mary's womb and extracting her Child by force. It should be equally inconceivable to imagine it happening today.
Yes, Jesus was Divinity and we cannot speak of ourselves in exactly the same way. But certainly the scriptures tell us that the image of God is imprinted onto every human being conceived. While His physical body is no longer at stake, His image in newly-conceived people is equally worth protecting. We begin our lives as He began His--hidden in the mystery of our first home.
Find out more at the 40 Days for Life website.
Previous Posts
• Day 15: A Different Kind of Choice
• Day 10: Every Breath We Take
• Day 8: In the Power of Our Hand
• Day 7: Somebody Prayed for Them
• Day 5: Mercy in the Midst of Judgment
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