I often speak with people who are having physical pain. Some are planning for a surgery that will alleviate their pain. Some are recovering from an illness or injury and they are aware that pain is a part of the process, and that their pain will dissipate over time. Some are suffering from chronic continuing pain and see no end in sight—something that is really hard to bear for them and their loved ones. But there are kinds of physical pain that are a sign of good things coming—like the growing pains we had as little kids, those achy legs that our mothers and fathers told us meant that we were getting taller. The kind of pain that is really productive is labor pain.
You have a couple of pastors who know first-hand about that kind of pain. (Shout-out to pastor Deanne: between us, we have done this 7 times, the Biblical number of perfection!) When you waddle into the labor and delivery area, there can be lots of anxiety, especially the first time. It can feel like that moment when you are strapped into a roller coaster and you won’t be able to get out until the end of the ride. (I hate roller coasters.) For everyone else, it’s exciting, and for you, you long to see the end of the story you’ve been percolating, but there are going to be several hours of indignity, pain and heave-ho activity. For some women, those hours of hurt end in disaster.
And yet, at the end, if all goes well, you will be holding your newborn. You will cry and laugh at the same time as you greet them. All the months of heartburn, nausea, and awkwardness are subsumed in the pure joy of the new baby. A whole new age as a family has begun, as two become three and the circle of the family expands to cradle that little one.
Jesus uses the metaphor of labor pains to talk about the birth of a new age. In the Scripture that discusses wars, rumors of wars, famine, and earthquake, Jesus says that this certain time in history when all kinds of mayhem and upheaval will happen, will be signs of the new age to come. All of those stressful events will be like labor pains, as God prepares to introduce a new age. Trouble and turbulence behind, there will be the birth of a beautiful future with God ahead.