Quietly we float in the darkness of the womb, the hands of the Author carefully fashioning us into unforgettable human characters for His literary masterpiece. Every limb woven together, each hair individually counted. He knits His narrative thought into a unique character tapestry. We hear the metronomic beat of our mother’s heart meticulously counting down the days until our dramatic film debut. We open our eyes but see only darkness. We intermittently kick our cocoon to see if someone is really out there and are startled when someone pushes back. Soon the peaceful preparation we enjoyed in our biological “green room” is interrupted by violent shaking as if someone tapped us on the shoulder to remind us that we were the next act on stage. Suddenly, our dark, warm, soothing domicile is torn asunder like the roof of a house being ripped off by a tornado.

Lights, Camera, Action! It’s so cold, bright, and noisy, and the only lines we seem capable of reciting consist of incoherent crying, shamelessly exposing our thespian inexperience. Soon, however, we encounter the soothing touch of another cast member. It seems that, despite our small size and theatrical inexperience, we are actually the star of this particular scene. Quickly we calm down and enter what physicians call the quiet-alert state. The world is so interesting; we look around, we listen, we smell, and for the first time in our life we see the beautiful face of our former landlord, but as we look closer we see that she is a princess, a daughter of the King, and we are heirs to a Kingdom. We quickly realize that she wasn’t renting space but nurturing royalty. She speaks and her once muffled voice becomes a lilting clarion of care. The teary response of the characters around us suggests something special has happened. They hold their breaths and quietly ask themselves if this actor upstart will follow the Script and become the character he or she was created to be, or instead be content to improvise their life away, responding to every suggestion thrown out by the cultural audience. This is our dilemma. We began as a unique thought in God’s mind, a carefully crafted character in His Grand Story; will His thought return to Him as pulp fiction or Masterpiece Theater?

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139: 13-16, ESV)