“Let There Be Light”
God said “Let there be Light” - Genesis 1:3.
These simple words heralded the beginning of all, both the transcendent and mundane. The unique properties of light are only recently understood, and then only through the breakthrough work of Albert Einstein who revealed the otherworldly nature of light; its ability to transcend all the usual limitations of time and space that govern our physical world.
Light is a thing apart, essential to our existence, but not bound by it. It is omnipresent, relying on no substrate or conditions. It simply is, and its existence is far beyond our weak ability to define precisely how. While we can examine its properties, document its effects, and record some of the mechanisms by which it is revealed, we can neither create nor destroy it. Like God, it is beyond us.
A team of researchers at Northwestern University have been studying the fertilization of human eggs. They have been documenting the entry of the sperm enzyme into the ovum, and made a breathtaking discovery - photographic evidence of the “spark of life.” (see video above)
They call it the “zinc spark,” which occurs at the moment of successful fertilization, when the zinc in the gametes lights up in an explosion of brilliant light, a literal heralding of the moment of conception.
Senior author of the study, Prof. Teresa Woodruff, describes her reaction to that moment: “To see the zinc radiate out in a burst from each human egg was breathtaking.” Nature announcing the dawn of a new life with a burst not unlike fireworks tells us a great deal about ourselves. Most importantly, it can be argued as scientific evidence that life begins at the moment of conception, as believers have long held.
There are numerous stages that follow - when the blastocyst resulting from successful conception develops into a zygote, then embryo, fetus, and ultimately, a sentient, living child at birth - but from that brilliant moment of conception, we see unmistakably human life, enlivened by a visible explosion of light our ancestors long-described as the “Divine spark.”
Knowing the mechanism involved in producing that light, (the interaction of zinc atoms and a host of enzymes from sperm and ovum) in no way diminishes the unearthly and transcendent reality of the event - the creation of a new living organism where only “materials” once existed. At that moment, our contributions of sperm and egg have combined into something no longer ours alone, but rather an individual all its own, known to God and loved by Him.
This is the grand symphony of existence: once writ large with the utterance of those words, “Let there be Light,” now brought to the most intimate of circumstances, the womb of a woman; but made no less magnificent than the original event it reflects.
That we are capable of participating in Creation isn’t a burden to be avoided or a “problem” to abort, it is an incomprehensible gift from outside of us, beyond our power, unrestricted by the limitations of our physical world. Just like God. Just like Light.
End abortion, and in doing so, “Let there be Light!”