Footage of the egg under a microscope is mesmerizing, depicting a perfect sphere. As the grainy video plays, a single sperm makes contact with the egg’s surface, and suddenly a flash of light spreads from the point of contact. The whole surface of the egg is enveloped in light for one instant and then goes dark again.
This is the “zinc spark,” a phenomenon first discovered in 2011 at Northwestern University. When researchers published their findings of the zinc spark in 2016, excited secular news outlets slipped up a bit in the wording of their headlines. The Daily Mail enthused, “Sparks Really Do Fly: Scientists discover flash of light when new life is formed at the moment a sperm meets an egg.” Or as a Telegraph title read, “Bright flash of light marks incredible moment life begins when sperm meets egg.” You can hear the betrayed, buried belief in these words: Life is present from the moment of fertilization.
Given the awe the zinc spark inspired, it is ironic that the discovery also generated ideas for how it might aid the IVF industry in discarding human life. Apparently, the brighter the spark, the healthier the egg. This imaging can help “sort” the new lives formed by IVF. Northwestern University researcher Teresa Woodruff commented, “If you can look at the zinc spark at the time of fertilization, you will know immediately which eggs are the good ones to transfer in in vitro fertilization (IVF). It’s a way of sorting egg quality in a way we’ve never been able to assess before.”
The Wonder Betrays the Hunger
Another discovery from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shed further light, quite literally, on the zinc spark. MIT scientists discovered a swirling pattern in the burst of energy that hovers over the surface of the egg at conception. The swirls imitate patterns seen elsewhere in nature, similar to the Fibonacci sequence. We famously see the same mathematical arrays in the formation of spiral shells, atmospheric and ocean movement, and electrical signals. “After we started analyzing and modeling these waves, we found these same patterns show up in all these other systems,” says MIT physicist Nikta Fakhri. “It’s a manifestation of this very universal wave pattern.” If you look up images of these swirls, they do look familiar, almost like a paisley pattern. It’s as if a graphic designer got hold of a microscopic, round piece of canvas and painted on it.
As I read these secular studies and the ensuing news reports, what strikes me most is not the sad irony in their statements. It is the wonder in their voices. “This is literally the first step in the process that led to you,” murmurs the narrator of a video on MEDspiration, accompanied by images of the flash of light on the egg. The awe rolls on:
If life begins with a flash of energy, what does that say about you? Right now, every cell in your body is generating over a trillion electrical signals per second. All powered by the same force that lit up the very beginning of your life. It’s in every thought, every heartbeat, and every breath that you take. You’re more than flesh and blood; you’re a walking, breathing field of energy. So, the next time you wonder what you are, remember, you’re light, you’re energy, and it all started with a spark. (italics mine)
How close the writer of this video comes to the truth: What does this say about you? Next time you wonder what you are, remember: You’re more than flesh and blood. Witnessing the magic — the artistry — of conception forces the observant person to ask questions that are hard to answer. Creation’s mysteries continue to appear, and the more sophisticated our observations become, the more complex our sense of wonder.
The longer we contemplate the heavens, the more abundantly they pour out speech to us, declaring the glory of God, proclaiming his handiwork, and revealing knowledge of his character (Psalm 19:1–2). The more closely we examine a stone on the side of a cliff, the more clearly we hear it cry out about the mighty works it has seen (Luke 19:37, 40).
And the more we learn about the conception, growth, and workings of human beings made in God’s image, the more God reveals that his ways are beyond the claims of the scientific method. We would like to think that our whole universe is made up of repetitive and reducible processes. Nature: observable and repeatable. But much of it — like the God-wrought “spark” that birthed this universe (Genesis 1:3) — is neither observable nor repeatable.
We live in a supernatural world.
Pregnancy as a Key to the Supernatural World
Being pregnant always gives me a breathtaking sense of participating in miracles. Pregnancy pulls back the curtain on the supernatural by making it perfectly clear that we all live among miracles, all the time. After all, what we call “miracles” are only the ordinary processes of nature, just sped up or reversed by God’s sovereign hand.
Wounds heal all the time. But when Jesus puts his hand on a wound to heal it in a moment, we see the miracle (Matthew 8:2–3). Water, filtered through a grape and given time, is becoming wine even as we speak, to the tune of millions of gallons a year. But when Jesus cups wine out of a once-empty jug, we recognize it as miracle (John 2:6–11). Bread is made through air and dirt and sunshine and fire, in the ordinary way, every day. Fish begin as cells that develop from eggs and then take on bone and oily, delicious flesh. But when Jesus makes both bread and fish by some other, speedier method, we recognize the miracle — and our eyes lift to the miracle-Giver (Matthew 14:15–21). To paraphrase Lewis, God shouts — on rare occasions — in the supernatural, but he is constantly whispering in the natural. We must tune our ears to hear the whisper. We must open our eyes to the fact that he is performing works of power all around us, at every moment.
Babies, coming to us through the normal means — moments of physical desire, months of bodily fatigue, hours of pain and effort — this we call nature. But when you experience it yourself, there are moments when the natural process forces you to stop pretending you understand it all. You know in your marrow that it is miracle.
The workings of nature — even those workings that we take intimate part in — are still beyond our grasp. We know what happens, in a sense. As time passes and imaging improves, we know more and more about what happens. But do we really know why it happens? Why does a new enfleshed soul appear, a little child that is born with eternity stamped in his or her eyes? The “spark of life” is a sudden release of zinc ions — millions of them — into the surrounding space, a ricochet of energy caused by the sperm’s invasion. But to paraphrase Ramandu from C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, egg and sperm and zinc sparks are not what new life is, only what it is made of.
To have a child is to be a child again, to see that when anything breaks into motion — a bird takes wing, a hand claps and makes a sound, a hair pushes out of a scalp and coils into a ringlet — all of it had no reason to happen except for the spoken desire of a good God. And this is what you hear in the quotes from the MIT scientists, the reporters, the makers of trickle-down short-form video content on TikTok. They all fumble for the words the psalmist already found in Psalm 139:13–16:
You formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
The wonder in our voices, as Christian men and women observing God’s created power all around us, comes from a sure conviction: Every time that spark of life occurs, a new body-and-soul has appeared. Wonderful are his works; our souls know it very well.
Desiring God