High Calling Magazine
The official publication of The Francis Asbury Society

The Nature of God in Motherhood

A Message of Joy

Genesis 3:16; Hebrews 2: 8-11, 9:11-14,22; John 12:20-28

BY DIANE URY
 

We know that the Nature of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit exists as a relationship of total equality, mutuality, and self-giving love.  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in perfect unity because of their sacrificial, self-denying love for one another.

Bearing a child is bearing a treasured gift from the heart of God to experience some of his own characteristics through this common, earthly, human role.

I have three daughters.  As they have grown up I’ve had the privilege of sharing with them about the changes that will occur in their bodies as they become women. Without this essential part of our being women, there would be no life at all.  I’ve come to view this part of my life as an unspeakable gift of privilege that I could be that intimately related to the heart and nature of my Savior.  Central to whom we are, more frequently than we would choose, God has allowed us to be reminded of how sacred and precious to his plan for all of humankind we are as women.  Men have many gifts and privileges.  Some specific areas in life seem to be set aside for men alone.  However, they have nothing that comes close to this gift that we carry in our beings. 

At the heart of every human being, if we are honest, is the recognition of the need for sacrifice.  We know that somehow our lives are dependent upon the shedding of the blood of another.  Our eternal souls’ final rest is contingent upon the blood of “very God of very God” paying for and cleansing us.  Our existence is dependent upon the very blood of our mothers.  Amazing.

I’ve birthed four babies-the first three with absolutely no drugs or anesthesia.  I wouldn’t recommend that experience, but I also wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.  I count it as one of the most blessed honors of my life to have labored and suffered and felt the birth of my children.  Jesus lived in a cruel world, with cruel people.  He labored and worked to give them life and truth and light.  The fruit was puny.  Then he died and shed his blood, shed his life, descended into Hell in order to give us life that we could never have achieved in our darkened and lost condition.  By his resurrection the fruit of his life is manifold. In his physical body he carries even now this day for us, all that we have ever gone through or ever will go through.  In childbirth we share in his sufferings to bring life.  We risk our lives in order to bear a life, a soul whom we don’t even know yet, but whom we have loved with all our heart as he or she has kicked, rolled, and hiccuped within our womb for months.  We carry in our beings this sacramental picture and gift of the heart of God’s love for His children.

When our babies are born, we are privileged to be their source, their fountain of life.  Immediately, they are placed to our breast and know exactly what to do. They know that this one in whom they have lived, from whose blood they have shared nourishment, whose breath has been their breath, is still their life.  A few hours away and these dependent, helpless ones would die.  We swell with wonder and awe that we could love these little strangers so deeply as we are enabled to rise, and rise, and rise all through the night to meet their demanding needs -–food, cleansing, physical love.

No human being is any different from any other infant in his need for the life of God.  Hour by hour we desperately need his perfect presence.  Without him, we die.  We might think we are alive, but we are dead.  He is our bread of life, our living water, the very air we breathe, the only one who can purify and cleanse our souls.  We do not give birth and life to our babies only to let them be on their own.  How absurd. Jesus did not live a perfectly obedient, difficult life on this earth, die a sacrificial death, rise to life again, and ascend into heaven fully human and fully God only to forgive our sins! He gave himself to us so that he could put his life within us.  Only when his life is in our life is there salvation.  He longs ever to commune with us and make us holy like himself.  And in that we too become self-giving, offering his life through our lives to the lost and hurting of this world.  A Christian woman in the second century, Felicitas, on the way to martyrdom exclaimed, “Another is in me!” as she bravely faced death.  Her cry was formative of the significant theological thoughts developed over the next several centuries.  Let us daily remember her heart’s cry and make it our own.

Being a mother is like the life of the Holy Spirit of God.  Self-effacing, wise, “all-knowing” – (omniscient?  My children thought I was for a long time!)- providing comforter.  And much, much more.  Col.1: 28-29 is my “mother-life verse”.  “We proclaim him (Jesus), admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.  To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.”

We give to our babies.  But even in their helpless, needy state, they give much to us. It is mutual. They offer us a most amazing experience of love.  I’ll never forget the first time as a very young, new mother I realized that my baby loved me.  I was lost in love for her but was made breathless by the surprise gift of her love for me.  We love that person in a unique, powerful way.  And that person loves us as we’ve never been loved before.  Our children offer us the priceless gift of being that grain of wheat that has the privilege of dying and finding its life again as it bears fruit.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world without end.

Amen.

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