Advent Musings: When Does Life Begin?
The Bible makes it clear that life begins at fertilisation. It talks of us being ‘knit together’ in our mother’s womb (Ps 139:13-16) and the angel’s announcements to Mary and Joseph talk of conception being the start of life. Admittedly in the case of Jesus, this was a conception like no other, but it is a fact that, under normal circumstances, when the male sperm fertilises the female egg, life starts and the result of this, in time, will be the birth of a baby, a genetically unique individual.
Nowadays, through technology, we can even see the baby inside the womb. I have a photograph near the computer of my granddaughter’s 12 week scan: I constantly marvel at the clarity of this picture, even down to her large forehead and snub nose! Doctors tell us that at three weeks, the baby’s heart starts to beat and at eight weeks, all its organs are in place. As early as ten weeks, the baby has fingerprints! We know so much more now about life before birth, and it is a wonderful thing to behold.
Many in our society dispute the fact that life starts at conception, however. For them, life does not begin until the actual birth, or it occurs later on in the pregnancy when the ‘bunch of cells’ becomes a foetus. Such reasoning is dangerous, because it allows for people to think of abortion – the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy – as something ‘humane’ or ‘necessary’, rather than the deliberate taking of human life, which commonly would be termed murder.
The Christmas story reminds us that life begins way before we hold a screaming baby in our arms. The Bible takes us on this long journey from conception to birth (see Matt 1 & 2; Luke 1) to remind us, among other things, of the sanctity of life. Society is all the poorer when it forgets this.
Advent Musings: Life Is Precious
For many of us, the announcement of a pregnancy is joyous news. We rejoice at new life because we know, somehow, that life is precious. There is something within us that recognises the sanctity of life: that human life is sacred because we are made in God’s image. (Gen 1:27) We may not be able to articulate this belief, but there are very few people who are not pleased when they see a baby; even the grumpiest character tends to smile at a baby! People recognise something good and holy about life itself.
The belief that life is precious because God made us underpins our Christian faith. The fact that God came to earth as a baby is not simply a nice story to make us feel good, however. It demonstrates something of God’s nature: how much He loves us, how much He identifies with us and how He has entered into our world, with all its suffering and sorrow, to bear our sins and to reconcile us to Himself.
We readily acknowledge the trauma in our world and how much creation groans (Rom 8:22-23). But we also affirm the beauty in creation and the wonderful things God has made for us to enjoy (Ps 19:1-3, Job 33:28). Every time we hear of new life, we can rejoice because of God’s goodness and love, but we can also rejoice because He knows what it is to be fully human. The book of Hebrews expounds this theme and reassures us that suffering and joy are not mutually exclusive. As we ponder the birth of Christ, we can rejoice because He shares our humanity and can empathise with us, giving us help, grace and mercy (Heb 4:15-16). Life is precious, not just for the baby, but for each one of us. When life is tough, however, the birth of Christ offers us hope that lifts us out of darkness and hopelessness to a place of security and love.
Advent Musings: Waiting
The most obvious thing about any pregnancy is that it involves waiting. Excited parents often find out early these days that they are expecting a baby and one of the things they often say is ‘I just can’t wait!’ Children often ‘just can’t wait’ for Christmas, opening the doors of their Advent calendars excitedly. Waiting is difficult, but there is, in God’s wisdom, no shortcuts to waiting.
This seems baffling to us. After all, we believe in a God who is not limited by time and space the way we are, and we do read at times of God doing amazing things (the Spirit of God moving Philip from his conversation with the Ethiopian eunuch to Azotus, for example (Acts 8:39-40)). But for the majority of the time, waiting is part of the refining process and a necessary part of life. Ps 27:14 urges us to ‘wait for the Lord; be strong, and take heart and wait for the Lord.’
I often think of the waiting involved between the miraculous appearance of the angel to Mary and Joseph and the actual birth of Jesus. Nine ordinary months, perhaps, but how hard it must have been for this young couple. They knew they had done nothing wrong; they knew this was a miracle baby, but they had to live through periods of doubt, anxiety and, I am sure, sheer bewilderment.
Waiting for the fulfilment of God’s promises to us is never easy. Mary at least had the visible sign of Elizabeth’s special pregnancy and her own swelling stomach to assure her that what she had heard was not just fantasy! Often, we have to hide God’s word in our hearts (Ps 119:11) as we wait patiently (Rom 8:23-25), reminding ourselves of God’s faithfulness (Ps 117:2, Ps 119:90). If you’re waiting today, don’t lose heart. God is never early, never late, but always comes at the right time – Christmas is proof of that. (Gal 4:4)
While You Were Sleeping
Stephen closed tonight’s service by singing the Casting Crowns’ song ‘While You Were Sleeping‘:
‘Oh little town of Bethlehem,
Looks like another silent night
Above your deep and dreamless sleep
A giant star lights up the sky
And while you’re lying in the dark
There shines an everlasting light
For the King has left His throne
And is sleeping in a manger tonight.
Oh Bethlehem, what you have missed while you were sleeping;
For God became a man
And stepped into your world today.
Oh Bethlehem, you will go down in history
As a city with no room for its King
While you were sleeping,
While you were sleeping.
Oh little town of Jerusalem
Looks like another silent night.
The Father gave His only Son
The Way, the Truth, the Life had come,
But there was no room for Him in the world He came to save.
Jerusalem, what you have missed while you were sleeping.
The Saviour of the world is dying on your cross today.
Jerusalem, you will go down in history
As a city with no room for its King
While you were sleeping,
While you were sleeping.
United States of America
Looks like another silent night
As we’re sung to sleep by philosophies
That save the trees and kill the children,
And while we’re lying in the dark
There’s a shout heard ‘cross the eastern sky
For the Bridegroom has returned
And has carried His bride away in the night.
America, what will we miss while we are sleeping?
Will Jesus come again
And leave us slumbering where we lay?
America, will we go down in history
As a nation with no room for its King?
Will we be sleeping?
Will we be sleeping?’ (Casting Crowns, ‘While You Were Sleeping’)
Advent activities
Tonight we had a quiz (with an ingeniously designed scoring method whereby baby Jesus moved from heaven to earth!) which involved questions about Christmas, singing activities and an egg and spoon race!
Many of the questions proved difficult to answer! – but in the interests of broadening our knowledge, we discovered that olibanum is another name for frankincense, 23 musicians feature in the song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ (twelve drummers and eleven pipers) and Father Christmas used to dress in green!
Advent Arrivals
Garry spoke tonight on the subject of ‘Advent Arrivals’, starting with a game of ‘word association’ to illustrate the point that nowadays when most of us think of ‘Advent’, the next word we think of is ‘calendar’!
For many people, Advent is the ‘countdown’ to Christmas, but just as the marathon runner Recho Kosgei failed to cross the finish line by only 900 yards in the Warsaw Marathon this year, so often we ‘count down’ and never really arrive…
Advent means arrival, and this time of year sees Christians preparing to remember the coming of Christ to earth. Luke 2:22-26 tells the story of Simeon waiting for the arrival of the Messiah and finding this fulfilled as he held the baby Jesus in his arms. Luke 3:15 shows us that people were waiting expectantly for the Messiah, God’s chosen one, to arrive, but people’s perceptions about what the Messiah would look like were vastly different. Some were waiting for peace to come and justice to be done (see Is 2:4); others were waiting for a ruler to rout the Romans. Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem fulfilled the prophecy about this ruler (found in Micah 5:2), but most people could not understand how He could fulfil every prophecy and be a prophet, priest and king. We have the advantage of looking back to Christmas and seeing how His birth demonstrated the fulfilment of prophecy; we also see how His life, death and resurrection all demonstrate His role as Saviour and Messiah.
Jesus spoke, however, about another arrival for which we still wait. (Matt 24:1-3, Mk 13:26) Just as the people did not really know the time of the arrival of the Messiah and were taken by surprise that first Christmas, so we too do not know when Jesus will come again (1 Thess 5:1-6), a fact which causes many to scoff and doubt (see 2 Pet 3:3-9), but which means we need to be alert, sober and self-controlled. The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night; we need to be counting down to this arrival and not just eating chocolates in our Advent calendars!