“When a woman gives birth, she has a hard time, there’s no getting around it. But when the baby is born, there is joy in the birth. This new life in the world wipes out memory of the pain. The sadness you have right now is similar to that pain, but the coming joy is also similar. When I see you again, you’ll be full of joy, and it will be a joy no one can rob from you.” (John 16:20-23 The Message)
I couldn’t stop crying for a loved one who was in terrible pain. He’s been in anguish off and on for nearly 20 years. He’s brilliant, talented, good looking, makes good money, has a great family, but hasn’t been comfortable in his own skin for a long time, if ever. Breaks my heart. Yet another crisis occurred and added pain to his already difficult life.
I racked my brain for a passage from the Bible that might ease his troubled mind and finally did a search of the word “pain,” hoping to find something that might help, even a little. The word is scattered throughout both testaments over sixty times referring to physical pain, mental anguish, relational trauma, and overall brokenheartedness. One of them look back at Jesus bearing our pain on his cross (Isaiah 53:4) and another looks forward to pain’s riddance in the new creation (Revelation 21:4).
What stood out to me most though, was the Bible’s use of the recurring metaphor of the excruciating “pain of childbirth” to describe suffering of various kinds that eventually results of something wonderful.
You might have guessed that I’m terribly limited in reference to this awful yet wonderful ordeal of which every mother can testify. I was in the room though, through the gory and the glory when each time our two children made their entrance into the world. To say that I admire every woman that has ever endured such trauma is an understatement. “Birth pains” and “labor” are appropriately, if not terribly understated terms coined for it.
But as Jesus said, following the labor, the pain, the suffering, “a baby is born!” and makes it all worth it (at least that’s what I’m told). That is, until they become teenagers!
This new life in the world wipes out memory of the pain.
When I see you again, you’ll be full of joy.
Our troubles, says Paul, “achieve” something, “an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” (2 Corinthians 4:17)
James says our pain actually “produces” something, something I’ve heard is a good thing called, “perseverance.” (James 1:3)
To you and to my loved one: The baby is on the way!
barney wiget 