Praise the Father to the Fatherless

“Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord” (Baptist Faith & Message (2000), XVIII).

On Thursday mornings I have a men’s theology reading group at a local coffee shop. After yesterday's meeting I was driving around town listening to National Public Radio (NPR). There was a segment on the growth of human embryos in “lab dishes,”kept alive up to two weeks old – the current deadline for laboratory guidelines in the U.S. (the nervous system begins to form after this point). The embryos develop without “receiving instructions from the mother’s body…without any information from mom.”

My first thought was, “what a striking image of loneliness.” These human beings are conceived in a lab, grow for a brief period of time in a “lab dish,” and are terminated at two weeks – all in isolation from a mother’s womb. They are conceived to be observed and then thrown away. Alone. While not having awareness, they are human beings, and human beings were created to be the image of God, and were created with souls.

I am a one-issue voter: I am politically active for human life, conception to natural death. Apart from pro-life political activism, though, I was comforted by a single reality as I drove  - grieving - through town yesterday morning. These souls, conceived to serve human pragmatism alone and destined to die in two weeks, have a Father in heaven Who knows them and guarantees they are not to spend eternity as they spend those two weeks:

“…let the righteous be glad; let them exult before God;
Yes, let them rejoice with gladness.
Sing to God, sing praises to His name;
Lift up a song for Him who rides through the deserts,
Whose name is the LORD, and exult before Him.

A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows,
Is God in His holy habitation.
God makes a home for the lonely” (Psalm 68:3-6).

While we oppose this laboratory conception of the lonely doomed, we should, at the same time, praise the Father Who has a home destined for them in heaven’s eternal family. He doesn't miss one of them, no matter how small.

He is worthy of our praise.