I Love My Shepherd: Birth and the invisible umbilical cord

The question sounds esoteric, like we are sitting in a library with dark, rich wood walls and big cushiony leather seats and green Tiffany lamps, smoking cigars, with scotch, contemplating life. But it isn’t an unreasonable question when you are taking apart a passage of Scripture.

Understanding each word is something we sometimes take for granted, but it’s also why we have our pastors learn Greek and Hebrew. It’s important to understand the words we study. These are God’s love notes to us, each word, giving us understanding and insight into Who this Great God of ours is, and what He has done and continues to do for us.

Let’s look at some touch points from Scripture…

Job 38:28-33 – Birth is from God.

“Has the rain a father,
    or who has begotten the drops of dew?
From whose womb did the ice come forth,
    and who has given birth to the frost of heaven?
The waters become hard like stone,
    and the face of the deep is frozen.

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades
    or loose the cords of Orion?
Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season,
    or can you guide the Bear with its children?
Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
    Can you establish their rule on the earth?

Who births the frost? Who set the stars in place and designed the constellations? These are God’s hypothetical questions to Job. God’s pen takes several chapters of Job to help us understand that birth is always from Him. Anything that is birthed, He sets it into motion and causes it to be.

Psalm 22:10 – Birth ties us to God.

On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother's womb you have been my God.

Birth ties us to God. He is wrapped up in fathering or delivering, begetting, and creating. It is an intimate part of His work. We cannot know the Creator without understanding that He values birthing new things into being. We were all in fact born. That alone ties us to the Creator of the Universe, like an invisible lifelong umbilical cord, whether we care to admit it or not. Therefore, births themselves, remind us that we are intimately connected to something outside of ourselves, that this isn’t all there is to life. There is Something, Someone, greater than us.

Isaiah 43:19 – Birth’s are the beginning of something.

Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.

This seems slightly redundant, but it cannot be missed. Births are the beginning of something new, and we are reminded that God is AT WORK. He is constantly doing something new in our lives, always working, always forgiving, knitting, growing, and stretching us. That also means that births may make us a bit uncomfortable. Small births- a new path, a new plan, a new idea…these bring some level of surprise, discomfort, or unevenness to life. We can feel rather restless, wondering what is to come. Remembering that birth is God’s work, not the Evil One’s can offer some much needed comfort in unsettling seasons of change.

Psalm 71:6 – Birth is a gift to be praised.

Upon you I have leaned from before my birth;
you are he who took me from my mother's womb.
My praise is continually of you.

Births are a gift of the presence of God real and tangible. Maybe because Jesus, himself, was born as incarnate God on this Earth, or because it’s a place where our world meets the sacred so obviously for even a moment, but they are to be praised. We lift up our praise to Him who calls us out of darkness into His marvelous light (a birth of faith!)

Lord, we praise you because we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We thank you for molding and making us, and calling us out into Your light. Through the birth and death and resurrection of Your Son, Jesus Christ. AMEN!