The Labor Pains of Christ Coming
This last week I got to explain to a bunch of preteen boys what “birth pains” were during our weekly Zoom Bible study.
With the Christmas tree across from my computer, we were reading in Matthew 24, as Jesus talks about what is coming for his disciples and the world: natural disaster, war, suffering. And really, discussing the birth process is probably a conversation that all young men should have at some point, preferably before they find themselves in the labor and delivery room with their young wife transformed into a stranger. As I picked my way through what the boys needed to hear and what they didn’t, I saw a brief flash of overlap between Advent and Armageddon.
Sometimes we want to skip over the labor pains in the Christmas birth story—just as those boys wished I’d skipped over a discussion of childbirth—just as we wish we could skip over the world’s labor pains as we wait for Christ to come again—just as we wish we could skip over our soul’s labor pains as we watch Christ be daily born within us. But, as I explained to the boys, their eyes wide and full of panic (and hope that I would change the subject), this is not how it works. There is no skipping over suffering.
But if we look close, there is a rhythm that we see:
Pain. Rest.
Pressure. Reprieve.
Pushing. Respite.
It is work, but pay attention, because the terminology is deceptive. The word “labor” gives us the impression that we are doing the work, we are the ones doing the heavy lifting, we are the ones going from one place to another (moving the child from our belly to our arms, moving the world from the first coming to the second, moving ourselves from sinner to saved). This isn’t so.
What we are really doing is surrendering.
In the labor of birth, we surrender, allowing our body to do what it was created to do, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how short the period of pause between contractions. We surrender, as the baby works its way down through the birth canal, slowly, so much more slowly than we could’ve ever anticipated (especially for those of us impatient with excitement or flooded with fear). We surrender, and then—the crowning of new life.
This understanding of labor as surrender applies to the birth of babies and the birth of our souls, the first coming and the second. We walk now not only in the yearly space where we need to find the balance between the rush and the pause, but also in the daily walking with Christ as we learn the rhythm of His work in our lives, as He comes more fully within us through the suffering and the silence, the pain and the peace.
Just as the laboring woman wishes her baby in her arms without the agony of labor, so it is easy for me to yearn for Christ to be fully reflected in me now, for Him to return and put an end to suffering and sin now…when He shows us how new life arrives—slowly, not always comfortably, with only small reprieves where we can catch our breath.
He shows us the way this labor works—not through our efforts but through His transformative power allowing us to become what He created us initially to be.
I don’t know how much those boys understood what I was sharing with them last week. And I promise I tried not to traumatize them (too much).
The truth of the matter is that, just as I could never have imagined my body being torn and reshaped, stretched and reconfigured over five different pregnancies, so they cannot imagine what they will go through as they walk life with Christ, what they will find years from now to have been utterly and completely worthwhile because of the joy that waits before them. They can’t imagine the suffering they will look back on gladly because of the gift it gave them.
And if they could imagine, they might not get out of bed in the morning. Just as if we really remembered what we went through every time we delivered a baby, we might not be brave (or foolhardy) enough to have another. Just as if we knew the details of what we will go through to get to Jesus’ second coming, we might not be brave enough to cry out “Maranatha—come, Lord Jesus!”
And yet, God in His grace, reminds us of the rhythm of labor:
Pain. Rest.
Pressure. Reprieve.
Pushing. Respite.
And surrender, surrender, surrender.
In the times when we feel our hearts are being torn, our souls stretched beyond what they can handle, our spirits ripped asunder, we can know that there will be a reprieve coming, a chance to catch our breath. And we remember that the only way to get through the pain is to let ourselves relax (against all reasonable inclination) more fully into Christ, knowing that He is birthing Himself in us more fully each and every day, blossoming forth in wholeness.
And when we see Him fully, we will love Him far more than we could ever have anticipated…and the pain and suffering and agony will not even be worth remembering any more.
“O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.”
