“A pregnant woman isn’t going to have a child; she already has a child.”
~ Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life

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HUES: The birthing of life
by Dawn Slike
Monday, January 28, 2013 AD

Recently an article appeared in a local publication, quoting a priest who talked of our respect for life “from birth to natural death.” My first impulse was to cringe, but my better nature prevailed.

Perhaps he was just tired because he’d been to a hospital in the middle of the night administering last rites to a dying patient. Perhaps he simply said what so many other well-meaning Catholics and non-Catholic Christians say without thinking. Perhaps he hasn’t fully integrated the word “conception” into his ready vocabulary, which, in light of the forty-year scourge of Roe v. Wade, would indeed be unfortunate. But I really can’t judge; I simply don’t know.

When we think of birth, we think of childbirth, that moment in a child’s life when he or she exits the dark, warm womb and bursts into the brightness of God’s wonderful world.  But as Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life frequently and concisely points out, a pregnant woman isn’t going to have a child; she already has a child. A baby doesn’t “come into the world,” the baby in the womb is already in the world.

If we think about it, and well we should, God “birthed” us when He created us: at the moment of conception, when a single sperm cell — chosen from thousands by the egg — with precise and discerning permission from the egg — enters the ready, welcoming egg, and utterly glorious things begin to happen. Life is birthed, launched, at conception. Science proves this; videos such as The Miracle of Life and dozens of others reveal this miraculous and busy transformation.

When we think of our creation we tend to go to Psalm 139, a psalm of David which points to God as the Divine Author of all Life. Nearly every translation I’ve read glorifies God in His wondrous Omnipotence. Who indeed is more potent than God Himself? The entire Chapter 139 is magnificent. In the New International Version, verses 13-14 read: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

What impacts me even more than this powerful passage of Holy Scripture, however, is what is revealed in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, chapter 1, the first part of verse 5:  “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” It would serve all of us well to read also the progression of the next few verses. Clearly, if we take all this to heart, we know, we know that we are called by God from before our very creation to do all things in His name. We were birthed in God’s Mind — and who, except Him, knows how long before? — before we were “birthed” by His potent and unerring Will into our mother’s secret, sacred place.

These thoughts should cause us to pause, to allow perfectly appropriate awe to fill and take root in our minds and hearts, and yes, even to tremble.

God knows exactly what He is doing.

Our job is simply to listen to Him, trust and obey.

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Friends, Please pray for me, that I may be always focused on those things the Lord is asking me to do. Thank you!  Know that I’m praying for you as well! 
OUR GOD REIGNS.  ~  Dawn Slike News, Views, Hues and Stews

Mrs. Slike recently “retired” from her long tenure as the head of Lake County Right to Life.  She is a committed pro-lifer and no sooner did she “retire” than she founded three new ministries to help mothers, pregnant and those who have given birth, and all children, preborn and those already born.  One is to provide new mothers with cameras to take memorable pictures of her children.  She has a number of videos on YouTube of her playing the organ at her church.  Just go to YouTube and search Dawn Slike.  She has had numerous letters to the editor published in many newspapers.  Her most recent editorial column is about a book that has changed her life and one that she calls the second most important book she has ever read…They Fired the First Shot in 2012 by Terry Colafrancesco.  The first most important book she has ever read is her Holy Bible.