Today, I had the chance to see a joyful father and mother-to-be celebrating the news that after four and a half years of effort (including a recent in-vitro fertilization treatment), the wife is pregnant with the couple’s first child. Anxious worry about the effectiveness of treatments now gives way to the expectation of new life, with both a father and mother overjoyed that they have a little one on the way. It is a shame that sometimes the simple and uncomplicated desire to be a parent requires such great effort and expense, before the hard work of parenting a child can take place.

There are, at other times, situations where children are not welcomed into this world. Some of these situations are entirely understandable, where a rape results in a pregnant mother wondering why her genes must be mixed with those of a violent abuser in the little being inside her body. At other times, a husband and wife have an ‘accident,’ or a furtive couple engaged in fornication find out that they are pregnant and have to deal with the repercussions of their actions, reminded of it constantly in the child that serves as the visible image of their guilty conscience. This too is vanity, in that some may easily find themselves bearing and caring for children in situations that are not ideal while others in good situations must expend great effort to have their own children.

The Bible is full of the tragedy of the barren womb. While in our own time the blame for low pregnancies is typically either given to the lower sperm count of men (possibly due to chemicals [1]) or to infertility resulting from sexually transmitted diseases contracted in our society’s rampant fornication, in the ancient world sterility was blamed squarely on the woman. Much of the dysfunctional family drama that fills the ancient history of Israel from Abraham to Elkannah [2] involves the difficulties that result when people who are obsessed with passing on their family line for reasons of interest in prophecies run up against the limitations of human biology that are put there, it would appear, by divine providence.

A couple of examples should suffice. God often uses the delay of gratification of an intense longing to teach a lesson on patience and reliance on Him, and also to make that longing even fonder and more intense, to sift out what is most important in a life. In several striking cases, the children of godly people who had to wait a long time for children and who had to spend decades of longing were children of particular purpose. Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist were all children who were given over to God while in the womb, and the same could be said of Jeremiah [3], with their purpose already plain even before they drew their first breath of air.

Nor should it be doubted that God has great purposes for those whose birth was inconvenient. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, after all, was born to a likely teenage unmarried young lady whose willingness to accept a lifetime of gossip and slander for bearing the child of the Most High God made her blessed among women. Even as an adult in his early 30’s, Jesus was still cut by the slanders made about his parentage by the Jews of His time, slanders that remain cutting even two thousand years later when one reads the sneering comments like, “We were not born of fornication [4].” There are other inconvenient births, like that of the twins Pharez and Zarah, whose birth to a lovely young widow prompted first a lynch mob looking for the death of the mother Tamar, and then an embarrassing public confession of sin by the father, the leader of the lynch mob, Judah. That must have been an awkward moment.

One simply has to look at these sorts of matters and understand that God simply has a different way of dealing with life than we can easily imagine. What we view as immense trials and tragedies are simply ways that God chooses to either intervene or to allow events to take place that will nudge our lives in different directions than their current course. A young woman might be frightened to bear a child out of wedlock, but that child had no fault or say in the matter. On the other hand, a loving and sweet child could easily be a living reminder of the way that God brings beauty and joy even out of the worst horrors that we face in this life. If we are being even more optimistic, we can view that sometimes either unexpected life or the delay in a deep longing for children can prompt us to reflect upon the choices of our lives and of the evils of our world, and can give us greater compassion for others who struggle in their own ways.

After all, our suffering in the end is not supposed to bring us down. It is not for our destruction that we struggle and endure the affairs of this life. It is a glorious blessing to be able to see a little one grow in the womb, and then to grow from a helpless and vulnerable newborn infant into a being with the spark of a unique personality of his or her own. I often wonder if God looks down on us and sees us the same way as we look at the cute but not particularly competent little children that are all around us, with the same sort of indulgent good will and gentle patience, with the same joy at the adorable and accidental wisdom that is to be found in little people. Certainly the fact that so much of our own effort in life is spent in seeking a better world not only for ourselves but for future generations bears witness to the fact that even in our dark times there remains some sort of desire to pass along who we are in culture and genetic material to other beings in our image, in the imitation of our heavenly Father above who earnestly desires the same thing.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/05/03/book-review-exposed/

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/1-samuel-2-1-10-hannahs-song/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/personal-profile-hannah/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/hannahs-story/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/genesis-34-the-rape-of-dinah/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/reflections-on-the-haggadah/

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/before-you-were-born-i-knew-you/

[4] See John 8:41.