Baby

When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. (John 16:21)

In this verse, Jesus is talking about his impending death, trying to explain that there are difficult times to come, but that they will ultimately end in rejoicing. Just as a woman in the throes of labor, who cannot see beyond the pain while she's having the baby, forgets the pain when she hears that first cry. By the time the baby is in her arms, the pain seems like a thing long past.

We are in the throes of something these days. I think of what is possibly being born, and my mind keeps going back to Yeats's "The Second Coming." I don't know if I want to be here to see what's being born, because it's something not good.

Yet if we can take our eyes off the immediate unrest, if we can strive to view this world in spiritual terms and in the context of God's much bigger story of sin and redemption, then we can begin (I think) to get perspective. And what I see, when I look at things with these eyes, is a dire need for revival, for people to look at their emptiness square in the face, and realize that no political cause or political leader is going to fill that emptiness. No cultural change will make us whole. Vengeance and violence, cutting words and "cancellation," may make us heard and may puff us up, but not with anything solid. Not with anything true.

The center cannot hold, that's for sure. At least it doesn't look like it can at this point. But revival can be born in the strangest places, and at the strangest times. And perhaps revival will spring, phoenix-like, from the embers--whether just in the hearts of a few, or across a whole population.

That's my prayer, anyway. That, and "Come, Lord Jesus."

Since today's word is "Baby" and I posted a verse about childbirth, you'd think I'd share a picture of my own daughter. But it's my little sister's birthday today, so I'm sharing a picture of her instead. Here I am holding her, sometime around 1974.