Giving Birth to Wind

Parents always seem to remember the story of their child's birth. However stressful and painful the months of pregnancy and labor, it's worth every minute to hold the tiny life as he takes his first breaths. The joy in that single moment must be indescribable.

Of course, that single moment doesn't always come. Sometimes the baby never takes his first breaths. Here's a video story created by one woman who birthed a stillborn child five months ago:



This morning I ran across a related part of Isaiah that had hit me hard about a year ago. At the time, I was spending a week in South America preparing to lead a team of college students to Santiago for the coming summer. We went to build relationships with the Chilean college students and walk our lives with Jesus among them. We prayed that they would want to walk with Jesus too.

The planning trip was overwhelming and disheartening. I seemed to hit brick walls everywhere: with people, with housing, with language, with my own fear. I tried everything I knew, but nothing was working out right. It brought me to the point of tears. Then I read these words of the prophet Isaiah:

As a woman with child and about to give birth
writhes and cries out in her pain,
so were we in your presence, O LORD.
We were with child, we writhed in pain,
but we gave birth to wind.

Giving birth to wind--that's exactly how it felt. I was undergoing the pains of labor without the joy of the child's breath. It hurt, and it made me confused.

That's when I realized that I was trying too hard to do things in my own power. Only God himself could undertake the task. Only the Spirit could give birth to spiritual things.

As I cried out to God in frustration and bitterness, I remembered a verse in Romans 8, my favorite chapter of the Bible. It reads:

"And by [the Spirit] we cry, 'Abba, Father.' The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."

I still hurt, but knowing that I would one day share with Christ in glory was comforting. No matter the pain (hardship in South America, the loss of a child, or any number of sufferings), this is the gift for those who believe. As Jesus says in the book of John:

"A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy."

We will no longer give birth to wind one day because of Christ.

I love that.