A Mystery of Shadowed Things

The subject of the miraculous nature of conception must go all the way back to Eden, and this miracle--really just a particularly-focused element of the pervasive miracle of existence--is a miracle reiterated with every biological regeneration.  It is special to humans in that humans can see it as a miracle, but still it is the case that God participates in all renewals of life.

Humans, however, can be aware of God's participation in the intimacies of procreation--the closeness and momentary vulnerability of the couple, and the formation of the fragile conceptus in the inmost parts.  To be aware of the implication-laced fact of God's participation is necessarily bound up with the "knowing good and evil" aspect of the forbidden tree.  Moreover, it explains the otherwise unintelligible business of Adam and Eve being suddenly afraid of their own nakedness.

Adam and Eve were the only people present, and the animals could not have cared about nakedness.  Surely God can see through anything--what was the purpose of the first couple's concern about nakedness?  Only one answer presents itself: For the first couple to have settled in their nakedness would have been for them to have uncovered the nakedness of God--their co-participant in procreation.

Perhaps the greatest testimony to this is found in the gospel account of Jesus' own conception.  The idea of Jesus' birth to a virgin, one of the most loudly-proclaimed ideas in the world--an event that could have been heralded from on high or announced by pageantry like the exotic magi--is described in conceptual imagery only as "the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee" (Luke 1:35, KJV).

The miracle of conception is a mystery of shadowed things.