Notable Quote: What is Mankind from Psalm 8

“O Lord… When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?  You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.”

-Psalm 8:4-5

This is one of my favorite passages in all the psalms.  On the surface it doesn’t seem like one that would support a pro-life message, but there is God’s love for His creation throughout.  Yes, He must love His heavens, the immense burning stars and spheres that circle them and the moons that circle the planets, the comets with their flaming tails that streak across the solar systems, the harmony of their motions, the galaxies that they compose.  How beautiful He must think.  And here we are on this little planet in the corner of this immense universe, tucked away and subject to all the powerful and destructive forces, to all the corrosive and poisonous chemicals. 

And yet He has blessed us with safety, with warmth, with nutrients, just so we can flourish, prosper, and be satisfied.  He is mindful of us.  He allows us to gestate comfortably on this little world until we can be born into His greater world.  He has made us lower than the angels, perhaps, but better than the angels.  He has made us in His image. 

And what does it mean to be made in His image?  Is it like a father that looks at his newborn son and sees the physical resemblances?  Is it like a father looking at his five year old son building with Legos and Lincoln Logs all sorts of creative structures and contraptions?  Is it like a father looking at his ten year old boy chattering away about games or friends or adventures?  It is all those things and more. 

We are beloved in God’s heart, more so than just His inanimate creations, because we are made in His image.  He knew of us before we are born.  That child in the womb, invisible to us on the outside of that womb just as God is invisible to us on the outside of this cosmic womb we’re in, is made in God’s image.  Both are invisible.  Both share something very distinct.  Is it the DNA sequencing?  Is it the innate goodness?  Is it the simplicity of being?  It is all those things and more.

Abortion is wrong for many reasons: the destruction of innocent life, the negation of love, the violation of human dignity.  But those reasons are just satellites around the very core reason, that abortion violates the very image of God. 

Today, January 24, I’ll be marching in my fifth consecutive pro-life march on Washington.  Those of us who hold the pro-life issue dear in our hearts don’t wish this to be a political issue.  We don’t want to win elections on this.  We want the nation and indeed the whole world to see that child in the womb to be the nearest thing in the image of God that our little minds can conceptualize.  Pray for it to be so.