First published as This Life column in Sight Magazine, 12 November 2025
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be. – Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV)
I watched in awe at the acrobatic ripples of my grandchild ‘reaching out’ within my pregnant daughter. We were physically separated only by the womb wall, but we were dwelling in different worlds. I was profoundly curious about what this foetus could sense about life outside the womb.
Foetuses cannot ‘know’ that their vital placenta will expire and they will eventually exit their familiar ocean within the amniotic sac. Their life of warm water, muffled sounds and faint lights will end when they suddenly come face to face with the real human causes: loud and clear.
In the ‘new life’, limbs will stretch out into thin air, not into some cosy cocoon, and that may be scary! But newborn babies are hard-wired to ‘sniff’ out the new comforter – mother’s vital breast milk.
After all, God has “created my inmost being and knit me together in my mother’s womb” and His eyes “saw my unformed body” (Psalm 139:13, 16). No matter how many scientific explanations I read, this ‘knit’ is too perfect to be anything but miraculous.
Scientific research verifies that foetuses respond to external lights and voices. In utero, the foetus learns, identifies and remembers the sound of the mother’s voice, evidenced by an increased heart rate. During the third trimester, sonograms show that foetuses will turn their heads when responding to sounds they hear outside the womb.
Do they intrinsically sense that there may be life outside the womb walls?
Similarly, do we intrinsically sense that there may be life outside of this mortal sphere? When we encounter so many ‘God moments’, do we keep writing them off as mere coincidences?
While we are blessed if we have believed without seeing (John 20:29), sometimes the divine signs may turn our heads and increase our heart rates: a vivid dream, a sudden appearance, a street sign, a message ‘out of the blue’. Perhaps these are the faint lights and muffled voices that remind us that something ‘out there’ awaits us.
Like a newborn baby, we will come face-to-face with the loving light of ‘Our Father who art in Heaven’.
As her mortal candle was flickering, my late wife had a sudden surge of lucidity and asked her grandmother to sit down. Her grandmother had passed away long ago, but my wife could see her standing at the foot of the hospital bed. During that burst of energy, my ailing wife sat up smiling and reached forward to…something or someone.
In the lead-up to our final ‘delivery’, we ponder and perceive loving arms waiting to embrace us.
In a beautiful parallel, the ‘hour of our death’ may be ushered in by a welcoming party of angels and midwives, just like the hour of our birth.
Having held hands in birthing units and palliative care units – the similarities are chilling: the waiting room, feelings of helplessness, monitoring the breaths, the wrinkled skin, the tears.
Dr Wayne Dyer articulated this comparison between birth and death in a parable titled Your Sacred Self where a foetus questions life after delivery: “no-one has ever come back from there, it’s just the end of everything”.
Perhaps we are already hearing echoes, seeing glimmers and feeling ripples of the next life – the heavenly kingdom that is the eternal home of those who have gone before us.
Perhaps fear of death may be placated by the reminder that our souls have all been through something similar – at birth.
Perhaps these similarities are a reminder that death is not a full stop, but a comma.