During the time when we were making every effort to protect the lives of the vulnerable in society, greater numbers than ever of the most vulnerable perished. It was not any accident but entirely intentional. Abortion rates have only increased in the UK during the past year. In Scotland, more than twice as many lives were lost to abortion during 2020 as Covid or excess deaths. It is a heart-breaking reality that ought to grieve us. Worldwide, one in four pregnancies (25%) ends in abortion. Thankfully, a proposed amendment by one MP to decriminalise abortion entirely was withdrawn this week. It would have allowed abortion for any and every reason or none. We need to remind ourselves of how God reveals His care for the unborn to increase our concern for them.

David praises God’s care for him in the womb in Psalm 139:13-17.  We are helped to meditate on this in the following updated extract from David Dickson.  Dickson shows how David wonders at God’s exact knowledge of and power in relation to him. He formed him in the womb in an amazing way.

1. An All-Knowing and All-Powerful Care

God made us in the womb, and we live and move, and subsist by His power. It is impossible therefore for God not to know our words, works, thoughts and everything so that He has us always in His sight and under His power.

2. A Constant Care

The knowledge of God and His management of the creature is not like a man’s, who sets himself for a while on this object and then turns off to another object. God’s knowledge and management are a settled possession of His own workmanship. He does this by constantly beholding and settled regulating His work, by constantly maintaining and judging the most secret motion of a person’s spirit.

3. A Protective Care

The Lord in framing our bodies in our mother’s womb covered His tender work with His mighty power as with a shield from all troubles.

4. An Amazing Care

The right sight of God’s workmanship in our very bodies will force us to praise God’s unspeakable wisdom. David praises God because he is fearfully made. When God is seen in His glory in anything, His majesty becomes terrible to the beholder, His glory is so bright. We are “fearfully made.” When we do not consider Lord’s rare works aright they seem very common, so when His common works are thoroughly considered, they become very wonderful, “I am wonderfully made.“ The right sight of any one of God’s works gives light on all His works and shows them all to be wondrous or marvellous.

5. A Thought-Provoking Care

It is profitable for our soul when God’s work in our bodies is well grasped through careful consideration. As the Lord acquaints us with His works, we should observe them well, and bear witness to what we observe for His glory. David does this by saying that his soul knows these things “right well.”

6. An Intricate Care

God knows what He is making in His framing of our bodies. Neither darkness nor the distance of heaven from earth, nor any other impediment hinders Him in working. Making a person’s body of so many bones, arteries, veins, sinews etc. is a most intricate piece of work.

7. A Comprehensive Care

God sees things before they are made, and His purpose to make has no less clarity of knowledge of the thing to be made, than when it has been made. God in His decree to do, knows the thing to be done, as fully as when it is done. The Lord’s decrees concerning things to be done are so clear, so determinate, so certain as if the description and history of the thing were written in a book has something that had already happened. David uses the comparison of a written book to show the nature of God’s decrees.

8. A Precious Care

Rare wisdom can be learned from God’s decrees and works. The efforts that anyone takes to search them out is well recompensed with pleasure and profit, as David’s experience teaches us. He finds all God’s thoughts towards him to be precious. We should study this wisdom until we find it to be sweet, and then lay it up like a precious jewel in our mind when we have found it. All God’s revealed decrees are the substance of a believer’s comfort and joy, however harsh they seem to the unbeliever and unregenerate person. David says they are “precious to me.” The innumerable particular aspects of God’s purpose and decrees which are fulfilled daily towards His own children come to light from time to time. David says, “How great is the sum of them? if I should count them, they are more in number than the sand.”

Conclusion

We ought to be humbled by the Lord’s minute care for us from the very beginning of our existence until now. If God has exercised such care towards us in our unborn state, how great ought to be our concern and care for those that are unborn in their most vulnerable condition. It ought to grieve us that any should perish wilfully. Scripture tells us to open our “mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction” (Proverbs 31:8). Our wonder at God’s care for us ought to be a motivation to do what we can for such. It should also provide us with reasons to open our mouths in prayer on behalf of the unborn.

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