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Luke’s Journal July 2026  |  Vol.31  No.2  |  Sexuality

A Gynaecologist’s Psalm

I praise you, Lord, for women are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Before the embryo is but a month old, you have selected the genetic material for her offspring.

You carefully orchestrate the formation of her body, bringing hollow tubes silently together to fuse and house a generation as yet unconceived

– all this under the cover of brooding darkness.

Your hands surround her dividing follicles, her nourishing filigree networks of tiny blood vessels, and she bathes in the warmth of her own waters, protected and sheltered in the precious firm clasp of her mother.

So skillfully you weave the filmy tissues so that she may remain continent at will, and so carefully do you attend to the lining of the cavity for her own children one day.

Your attention to detail astounds.

While her fingers are hidden from her sight, you design the release of puffs of chemicals (just a fraction for perhaps a minute) which rise and fall through the day and night, and these will prepare her for motherhood.

You, the wise and careful architect of Life, ordain it so, and in studying our very presence we marvel at your creation.

You are Magnificent, the very origin of knowledge and the very essence of scientific truth.

How strange that men would seek to attribute this intricacy, this mesmerising clockwork detail, this symphony of biochemistry to mere chance?

As if the watch had the audacity to say, “Where is the watchmaker? Is he there? Why No! I appeared from the elements of the Earth?  I have no designer! I have no meaning! I just am!”

How foolish and arrogant men are, Lord Almighty, maker of all things!

The thread-like channels conveying messages from brain to blood to ovary are your design. You set the axons in position; you dictate their paths and connections. You say to the tanycytes, “Thus far and no further.”

By design and forethought you created her female, and indeed, she is very good, Lord. 

As she grows, the unseen gardener sows the seeds that bloom in fullness, and as a honeysuckle attracts the bee, so does her gentle breast draw her husband near; her baby draws life from its perfect twin.

Each month she reveals the seasons of her cycle.

You plan the release of her egg as a bride surrounded by her attendants, to meet one of a million suitors.

In some mysterious way she chooses(?) only one (a shadow of new life’s destiny?) and then goes on to set off as one whole, one new being.

A generation fused, a fitting vessel for your spark of life, for your indwelling Presence in time. 

How faithfully you allot that they spend a week alone, adrift in their holy chamber to emerge like a bride and groom, truly one flesh, and then sink deep in the richly prepared soil to bear much fruit.

Though this inseparable couple have diverse origins, their very flesh composite, you carefully shield this new life from the ravages of your inbuilt maternal defence.

Indeed, she welcomes her half-caste within and rejoices at his presence.

Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, she echoes Adam’s first delight at human creation.

Yours is the unseen chart on which is written the times, the roles and the nature of each tiny chemical that is freed to act at great distance to ensure the survival of its precious charge.

How fascinating your design, that the helpless, the innocent could gain a tenuous foothold on existence by such endocrine stealth!

She commandeers the flow and ebb of her mother’s metabolism; deftly exchanging substrate for substrate, growing, gathering food, oxygen for herself. 

Releasing waste to be recycled through her adoring mother who feels her move, knows her life, and is filled with joyous expectation, dreams and visions of the future.

All who are pregnant believe in tomorrow, for it is there for their offspring. 

Lord, let each one of us so live that we might be found willing hosts for your indwelling presence.

Find in our dusty temples the throne, the footstool and stay there, Lord. Gestate our fragile spirits until we grow more and more into your wonderful image.

Though others, Father, may see little outward influence of your nature, work within our darkness and shed your light in our hearts. 

How wonderful are your works in woman, Lord!

How privileged am I to know them as a man.

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