Birth Pangs of a Big Delivery

Delivering a child is painful enough even if all goes well. But one of the great tragedies of modern times is that, according to world health officials, more than 300,000 women die in childbirth every year.

Poor women in places like sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia still perish today largely because they don’t have a skilled attendant or a trained professional to handle emergencies that inevitably arise during childbirth. Yet, when a child is born safe and healthy, is there any greater joy?

Jesus’ remarks about the end of the world reflect this. It will be preceded by “birth pangs,” he said. It was a quiet moment with just Peter, James, John, and Andrew. The four had approached Jesus privately on the Mount of Olives, across from the Jewish Temple, to ask him about the end.

Jesus told them not to be deceived, after giving a litany of reasons why many will be. He said not to worry, after giving plenty of reasons why anyone would. Nothing was entirely clear. The disciples even had good reason to believe that theirs was the last generation. They were left to grapple with these paradoxes just as we are twenty centuries later.

But when Jesus spoke of birth pangs, he gave a valuable clue as to how the end would also be a beginning. So we can prepare for something new—a new heaven and new earth—just as much as we can wonder about, and even grieve, the traumatic end of the old.

"If I knew the world would end tomorrow, I’d still plant an apple tree today," Martin Luther once said. He knew that what we do today somehow impacts tomorrow, even Earth’s new tomorrow. We can find a certain security in this, and in knowing that a Skilled Attendant will be there at the delivery.

Respond in Prayer

Loving Heavenly Father: The earth, even marred and scarred and left trembling, is yours. At a time of your choosing, its end will come. Help me, while I live in it, to take care of what I can. And to find joy in knowing that it too will be reborn. For Jesus' sake, Amen.

Thomas Froese