“All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We are also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, anymore than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting.” –Rom 8:22-24 (MSG)
It’s hard to read this without feeling like it could’ve been written just last week.
It’s so easy for me to get stuck in the pain of today. There seems to be no shortage of it anywhere I turn.
From COVID deaths that were just statistics until they became mothers and brothers of friends, to racial injustice and violence, to political divisiveness and ugliness, financial and economic uncertainty and it’s accompanying fear, all the way to “how do we make life work and stay sane if the kids are not in school?“
I think Paul is saying, “Maybe I don’t need to get stuck, maybe the current struggles are pointing me to something more, maybe they are birth pangs reminding me that there is something better, something more that is coming.”
And not just for the world around us but within me, within us.
What is the Spirit of God awakening within me? Within you? I definitely find myself yearning for “full deliverance” and knowing that it is beyond me to create.
In all that is awakening, I recognize a deeper longing for Him, for wholeness, for heaven? I want, I need more of Him.
I want to pay attention to that movement within me the way a pregnant woman does the baby that is kicking and growing within her.
What is God growing in me? In you?
What do you hope He’s growing in you?
Although we don’t know how long the wait will be, may our hope be enlarged in the waiting.
