Labour Ward

 

Years ago (I wasn’t going to admit how many years ago because I can’t believe I’m that ancient, but it was 40 years ago), we had a black and white cat called Spats. Spats, tragically, found some tantalising food put out (illegally) by a farmer or gamekeeper, which was laced with poison. Recognising she was in trouble when she staggered in from her overnight wanderings, we dashed to the vet, who gave her an injection, though fearing it was too late. I brought her home, and lay her by the heater, speaking to her in low, comforting tones which did nothing to alleviate her agony. She died a terrible death. That was my first, and thankfully so far only, experience of ‘death throes’, with its thrashings, wails and groans. Absolutely dreadful.

The Lectio 365 devotions today focused on Mark 13, where Jesus, in talking with his disciples about the end of the age, catalogues some of the disasters which will take place in those last days, and they align pretty closely to what we are experiencing now. (I know people have said this for two thousand years, but now we have the environmental disaster time-clock approaching midnight, in addition to the wars, famines, earthquakes and so on). The wonderful insight drawn from that reading today was that Jesus does not say that these disasters are the earth’s and civilisation’s death throes, but the beginning of birth pains.

Not death throes. Birth pains. Something good is coming.

Wow! How did I never notice that? Suddenly my stoic, ‘Well, this is what Jesus said would happen and we just need to keep trusting that he is going to make all things new’, has changed to ‘How exciting! I wonder what God is going to bring to birth through this agony, as he makes all things new?!’

I’ve struggled to know how to counter discouragement and despair in others, feeling it might sound piously simplistic to point out there will come a day when things will wrap up and our only hope is in God remaining faithful to his word. There was no passion in my response, as I hoped to encourage my own hope by rehearsing these thoughts.

Now I feel so excited! A thrill of hope flutters within me, an assurance of God’s love, light breaking through the darkness as I welcome a real, vibrant anticipation of good things coming after the travail. What is God bringing to birth in this season in which we are living?

We who have given birth remember the pain, but the anticipation of the reward (s) to come kept us breathing and pushing, focusing beyond the pain to the joy to come.

I guess the world is still in the labour ward, but the delivery room beckons. ‘Behold, I am making all things new!’

Death throes have no place in the kingdom of God. May my prayers and words now reflect the certain hope that however bad things look now, our wonderful, loving Creator God must be looking beyond these times at the joy which is to come when he reveals his breath-taking surprise.

Oh happy day!