Saved through Childbearing

(C) 2005, Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey

This beautiful image was threaded through our church's liturgy this past Sunday. It especially captured my wife's imagination as we're expecting our second child any day now.

If you're familiar with biblical imagery and symbol, you'll recognize the pair as Eve and Mary. Their simple,  interplay of nakedness and clothing, shame and forgiveness, defeat and victory centers on the profound mystery of Mary's bulging belly. The mother becomes the daughter becomes the mother.

The "foolishness" of the Christ-story is much more than the passion, cross and resurrection. Central and inevitable is the mystery of God taking upon himself the brokenness, the limitation, the beauty, fragility, and mess of humanity.

It is a great, strange comfort that the lord of all things entered my world through slime, in the birthblood of an animal.
He who was was rich became poor, that through his poverty, many might become rich.

As my family prepares to welcome another rich little beggar into the world, we are glad and humbled to experience once again the unitive human experience of birth. It reminds us where we have come from, and where we are going.

We are grateful for the humble richness of God, who upends our every expectation.

We covet your thoughts and prayers as we prepare for our new little one!