“Her prophets are arrogant; they are treacherous men. Her priests profane the sanctuary and do violence to the law.” – Zephaniah 3:4
On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world’s first baby to be conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) was born at Oldham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, to parents Lesley and Peter Brown. The healthy baby was delivered shortly before midnight by cesarean section and weighed in at five pounds, 12 ounces.
Before giving birth to Louise, Lesley Brown had suffered years of infertility due to blocked fallopian tubes. In November 1977, she underwent the then-experimental IVF procedure. A mature egg was removed from one of her ovaries and combined in a laboratory dish with her husband’s sperm to form an embryo. The embryo then was implanted into her uterus a few days later. Her IVF doctors, British gynecologist Patrick Steptoe and scientist Robert Edwards had begun their pioneering collaboration a decade earlier.
On July 25, 2003, Louise turned twenty-five and Dr. Edwards did a rare but candid interview with The Times of London. “It was a fantastic achievement but it was about more than infertility,” said Edwards, then seventy-seven and emeritus professor of human reproduction at Cambridge University. “I wanted to find out exactly who was in charge, whether it was God Himself or whether it was scientists in the laboratory.”
Smiling arrogantly at the reporter, he said, “it was us.”
Arrogance is a sin. Today in prayer, confess any arrogance in your life and seek to walk humbly with Jesus.
“The first barrier to meekness arises whenever we claim as our own what is really a gift of God. To live in meekness, we must try to remember that all we are, have, and can do is a gift. It is an act of arrogance to place ourselves at the center of being and doing. Only God belongs there.” – Susan Annette Muto
God’s Word: “To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.” – Proverbs 8:13
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