I scribbled the word abortion with my teen-age cursive in my Study Bible. My youth pastor told us that Psalm 139 proved that God made us, knew us and determined that we each should live. Proof positive that abortion is a sin, he declared. And so I marked the margin of my Bible, determining to never forget where God stood on this issue.
Maybe as an adopted child I grew up with the acute awareness that I was a candidate for abortion, so it mattered a great deal to know God intended me to live before anyone considered an outcome to the contrary.
But in all these years thumbing past this passage I missed the poetry of the Psalm; I saw the issue and lost sight of the larger message looming over the text.
Jonathan Martin paraphrases the verse like this: ‘you are loved because you exist.’ Reading that in Prototype stopped me in my tracks. Nothing in the margin but love. No issue but wild acceptance. So I returned to my Bible and read Psalm 139 from top to bottom as if for the first time. And I cried.
Read the rest over at SheLoves Magazine…
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