labor, birth, and rebirth

I recently completed four weeks on obstetrics, logging 12 normal deliveries and two c-sections.  I enjoyed it, observing the normal labor course and learning to recognize what falls off the normal curve.  I also gained experience in coaching and encouraging women in labor and in pushing and caught a good number of what a friend of mine calls "slippery little buggers."  Really, though, I most enjoyed the almost magical moment that usually happens after the birth when the new mom and the baby are enveloped in a happiness that far outweighs what she went through to get there.  It so overshadows the previous pain that she usually temporarily forgets that she still has to deliver the placenta.  :)

In the course of OB, though, I was reminded that labor and birth are frequent images in Scripture, vivid reminders of how much closer everyone in a community used to be to the pain and blood and delight involved in bringing a new life into the world.  This ranges from comparing the prophet or people's pain to the "pangs" of a woman in labor (e.g. Isa. 21:3) writhing "in agony" (Micah 4:10) to descriptions of the Father himself crying out in suffering, gasping and panting, "like a woman in childbirth" in his heartbroken response to the people of Israel's unfaithfulness (Isa. 42:14).  This vivid familiarity with the birthing process was even such that the prophets could differentiate between the more intense and longer-lasting pains of a woman's first birth (e.g. Jer. 4:31) vs. subsequent ones.  God also recognizes the vulnerability of a woman in labor, promising explicitly to call women in labor back (along with the pregnant, blind, and lame) to the security of Jerusalem and home after the pain of exile among strangers (Jer. 31:8).

The image of birth is used for various "children."  In Deuteronomy, Moses calls the people of God to account for deserting and forgetting the God who "fathered you," "who gave you birth," calling to mind the great suffering God has endured in loving and calling and pursuing and wooing such a forgetful, faithless people to give us a new identity in the world as his children (32:18).  In Isaiah 26, the people confess that they have "writhed in pain" as in labor but have given birth to wind - to something insubstantial and effervescent - instead of to "salvation," to "people of the world" (vv. 17-19).  Most often, however, it is Israel who is pictured as God's child, as far from being forgotten or forsaken as the baby at a mother's breast whom she has borne (Isa. 49:14-16).

The imagery of birth is picked up most fantastically in the New Testament with the incredible story of the birth of God himself as the helpless newborn Jesus to Mary, recounted in Matthew 1 and Luke 2.  It is also recorded in its cosmic significance in the revelation of John as the birth of a male child "who will rule all the nations" (Rev. 12:1-2,5).  It is clear from the New Testament account that Jesus represents the true Israel, the one in whom all that Israel was meant to be is encapsulated (e.g. OT images for Israel being applied to Jesus with him fulfilling their purposes) and in whom the prophecies and promises are and will be fulfilled.  He is the one Man who is truly God's Son, who reflects the Father's image, his heart, his holiness, his love, his compassion, and his justice.

And yet, the apostle John's poetic account of the coming of Jesus begins to hint that there is still even more to the story.  Not only, he says, did "the Word become flesh" and make "his dwelling among us."  Not only have we "seen his glory," the glory of the one "who came from the Father."  But we also have the opportunity - nay, more! - "the right to become children of God."  This is not something physical, he clarifies.  We are not children born "of natural descent" but "born of God" (Jn. 1:12-14).  That picture of Israel being God's child can still apply to us (us!) even though Jesus has come and shown us just how far we as the people of God have gotten off track, how little we bear the image of our Father.  We can still be the children of God.

John uses this imagery most in the New Testament, both in his gospel and in his epistles, describing what it means to be a child of God - not continuing in sin (1 Jn. 3:9) because we are of God's seed, loving one another because love comes from God (1 Jn. 4:7), being "born of water and the Spirit" in Jesus' words explaining what it means to be "born again" (Jn. 3:3-5).  Peter, too, picks up the language, explaining that we have been born again "not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God" (1 Pe. 1:23).

The use of birth imagery doesn't even stop there, however.  It is used of us as believers, too.  We now also have the opportunity to participate in this imagery as something beyond the child of God that is born.  We are also part of the birth process.  This appears in Romans 8 where creation and we ourselves groan "in the pains of childbirth" as we "patiently" await redemption and adoption with "eager expectation" and with hope (vv. 19-25).  Paul describes himself enduring "the pains of childbirth" so that Christ may be formed in the his spiritual children, the Galatian church (Gal. 4:19-20).  We have the opportunity to participate in that formation so that we as God's children may more closely resemble our elder Brother, God's Son.  The apostle John also picks up the imagery as he quotes Jesus comparing the pain of the disciples' temporary separation from Himself to the pain of a woman giving birth to a child.  Just as a woman giving birth quickly "forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world," however, he promises that the disciples' joy will far outshine their present pain (Jn. 16:19-22).

These pictures mean more to me as I think about the women in labor I have seen.  The pain of separation from God is more vividly pictured, as is his pain over us when we turn away from Him.  The process of birth and the precious fragility of a newborn is all the more poignant for the fact that the Maker of mankind was once so very breakable.  The immediate and consuming joy on a mother's face as she is handed her little one, able to hold him for the first time and automatically comforting and cuddling the wailing infant, helps me to remember God's tender care for each of us and his delight over new children's births as his children.  The satisfaction in participating in the labor process and seeing it through to the birth encourages me to keep holding up my end of participating with the Holy Spirit's work of forming Christ in me.  The way in which the weariness, pain, bleeding, and risk are all ever so worth the baby at the end enable me to await with more hope and eager expectation my and our own redemption and adoption.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Pe. 1:3-5).