Your Right To Life

“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee…” (Jeremiah 1:5)

In the above verse God says to Jeremiah that He knew him before he was conceived in the womb and that He had consecrated him. Jeremiah’s life was not an accident. God had a plan for his life and was divinely aware of him.

Today many are saying that euthanasia and assisted suicide should be made legal. They say that if a person has not got a quality of life their life is not worth living. This type of thinking is very scary, as who decides what is ‘quality of life’? We are heading into a very dangerous time and if we start thinking along these lines we are directly affecting those with disabilities, mental or physical handicaps, the elderly, the young and anyone requiring long term care. God is not involved in these decisions at all. The power of life and death is now in the hands of a person who can abuse that power. Their decisions may be based on many different things. Often the stress alone of caring for someone can have a huge impact on their decision. There are also other considerations such as financial pressure and pressure from doctors and care givers, family, friends, etc. As quality of life becomes more of an issue we are moving away from our compassion to care for all people. We are becoming a hard-hearted, selfish and callous people who have lost respect for human life.

When we leave God out of our decisions we are doomed! “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.” (Psa. 111:10). To God, all life is precious and has meaning. We are all affected by each other in various ways. When we care for the weak and needy we are able to grow in a way that we may otherwise have not gone. God wants us to continue to grow and become more like Him. We are not to discard the things that get in our way, even if we feel at the time that we have good reason. We are to honour God and all that He gives us. We must develop a new type of thinking where we are not always looking at the external, but also at the spiritual. We are created in the image of God and He is constantly working in our lives. When we become selfish and self absorbed, thinking only of what we want, God cannot use us and work in our lives. It is our responsibility to care for those who are in distress, not to say ‘Oh they aren’t living a full life anymore, maybe their time is up and something should be done’!

Our lives are in God’s hands. I believe that God has numbered our days and that we will not die one second before He intends us to. “…the number of thy days I will fulfil.” (Ex. 23:26). He created each of us for a reason and it is not for man to say that someone’s life is no longer valuable. He is our life! “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that though mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.” (Deut. 30 19-20).

We live in a world where we worship youth, beauty and wealth. It is a disposable culture that tends to want to dispose of something once it no longer has a perceived value. Today we are now seeing the phrase ‘duty to die’ being used. We are trying to make the elderly, etc. feel guilty about the cost of keeping them alive. Our society is saying their is no value in their and lives and that they should choose death. “And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places whither I have driven them, saith the Lord of hosts.” (Jer. 8:3). Everyone has the right to life. We must not let the bioethicists, economists and doctors abandon the sanctity of life. God created us and He is the only one that has the right to end our life. He knew us before we were born into this world and He even knew our name. We must not let euthanasia and assisted suicide become acceptable ways to end a person’s life.

“And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.” (Isaiah 45:3)

We must not let the world steal our life, the life that Jesus Christ came to earth and was crucified for.

“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that thy might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)