Before you were ever conceived, you existed in the mind and heart of God. This is where value comes from. This is where being originates. This is the ultimate ontological truth. David wrote,
Psalm 139:13-16 NIV
[13] For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. [14] I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. [15] My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. [16] Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
We see this truth emobodied in Jeremiah’s calling experience. Jeremiah 1:4-5 reads, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying, [5] ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.’”
Being flows out of the first Being, as Aristotle put it, the Prime Mover (I am under no illusion that Aristotle was a Christian; he definitely was not). All movement, including the creation of every single being, flows out of God.
I was listening to a speaker this morning and got curious. I looked up the following information:
“It takes just one sperm to fertilize an egg and achieve a pregnancy, but for each sperm that reaches and fertilizes an egg, there are millions that don’t. The average ejaculation contains close to 100 million sperm…To meet the waiting egg, the semen must travel from the vagina to the fallopian tubes, an arduous journey that few sperm survive. For those that complete the trip, penetration of the egg is far from a sure thing. The egg is covered by a thick layer that makes fertilization difficult.” (WebMD)
100 million. Did you read that? Are you really grapsing the implications of this science? 100 million, and you, you specifically, only you, made it. Were chosen. Chosen to exist. Chosen to breathe and live because God wanted to know you. You. He loves you. He wanted you. For what? Surely He did not go to all of this intricate trouble just to have you do a few things. You were chosen to live overwhelmed, ruined, saturated in an intimate relationship that defies description.
Hold your head up. Lift up your eyes. You were chosen to exist because God desires you. You.
BJ Condrey, Ph.D. 