My first time giving birth I was green. I had read all the books, I had committed in my heart to give birth naturally. I mean, I was convinced that it was the ONLY way to go. But the time came, my water broke 4 weeks before my due date, I was caught offguard, I went to the hospital, and when I didn’t have “productive” enough contractions, they started me on a healthy dose of pitocin. A few hours later, body shaking, lips quivering, and two centimeters, I welcomed the epidural. I was really green by then. Discouragement. Within the hour I was giving birth. I just hadn’t been able to relax under the stress of the pitocin. And I didn’t have anyone with me who could help remind me—there was no midwife to help me through and to see the light on the other side.
Since then, I have given birth enough times to know the roadmap. Here it goes: Excitement, Pain, Discouragement… Then just when you feel like you can’t make it any longer, you know its close; the most pain you’ve ever felt, LIFE!
So it goes with all else. Sometimes the soil of my heart isn’t fertile to receive the life-giving seed he wants to birth in me.
I was reading this morning and thinking about the pain and death of the curse that Adam and Eve brought on us, “…in pain you shall bring forth children.” (Gen 3:16b).
Death: it begins. It wages war. The first couple agreed with Satan and so united with death and suffering himself: a congenital disease, it spread. And we feel it. It still stings us each day: loss, pain, tragedy. Through their sin, we were transferred to death, and the law of sin and death reigned over us all, our lives forfeit.
The enemy was convinced that in bringing death, he was triumphant.
Its spread to us and the symptom is our appetite for sin; we can’t control ourselves, it never stops. Its taken away our sight. We can’t see goodness.
Israel, sin-cinged off the map, their people are taken into captivity. Jerusalem lies burnt. Dead. But in those ashes, there’s a stump where that tree once stood. The forest burned, and the people whom God had chosen looked as though they were gone forever, and with them the promises of God revealing himself through his chosen people.
Only in pain and in hard labor would there be any fruit. And God, the God of the impossible, uses the pain as a midwife to bring in life: light from darkness, hope from despair, beauty for ashes.
The shoot. The same tree new with life. Only in Jesus can pain make sense, for without it there would never have been one who was without sin to be sin for us. No way back.
In pain, you shall bring forth life. And He did. It’s the way its set up. Hope. The pain is for a reason: it leads to life. Its our midwife. God always uses death to bring about life: he’s in the business of resurrection. It’s the one thing the enemy didn’t expect.
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. (1 Corinthians 15:21)
In death we take heart, for he has overcome. He works his grace in each circumstance, and through each little death we die, somehow if our response is right, then we overcome, too.
Even in the curse of death, God foreknew the way back to new life. If we know the roadmap, then its not scary, because we know that when death has fully worked its way in us, then we can truly live.
And in our pain, the great Physician can tell us that just when it seems too much to handle, just when its too hard, just when we can't make it, that's when there's life coming. He's birthing something from the inside of you and working it to its completion. And if we listen to his voice, he will help us to do it the best way, and he's with us. And its going to be beautiful.
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