Comments on: The birth pains of a new world https://anglicanjournal.com/the-birth-pains-of-a-new-world/ National News from the Anglican Church of Canada Wed, 26 Jan 2022 22:09:18 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Paul Woehrle https://anglicanjournal.com/the-birth-pains-of-a-new-world/#comment-44093 Sun, 12 Dec 2021 21:48:41 +0000 https://www.anglicanjournal.com/?p=170033#comment-44093 We are celebrating the birth of a child in our church community with great joy and thanksgiving. The child has been anticipated for months, if not years with unsuccessful attempts at conception and gestation. The cry, “How long, O Lord?” has gone up by, and on behalf of this couple. A few weeks before the planned ‘inducement’ she said how she was loving being pregnant and wished this stage would go on for a while. The birth pangs had not yet begun.
I wonder if many of us express this sentiment with regard to the church and the world in relation to the Birth Pangs. Like this expectant mother, we sense that the birth pangs will bring with them change; and we intuit that the changes will be far-reaching. So, “maybe later, but not now”. The status quo seems best. As if we had any say in the birth or the birth pangs of a new age – Ha!

One thing about birth – it is important to know who is doing the birthing and who is being birthed. I think we are the ones being ‘born-again’ in the new age of the Spirit. And from the picture of the newborn mentioned above, the kid’s face was kind of flat, and my wife informed me that birth can do that to a face, which she anticipated would find its ‘pre-labour’ shape. No wonder we resist the labour pangs (or deny they are even happening)! Through rebirth will be transformed (which may also include being deformed), so the suffering is real. And so is the hope.

]]> By: PAMELA THOMSON https://anglicanjournal.com/the-birth-pains-of-a-new-world/#comment-44092 Fri, 10 Dec 2021 22:27:04 +0000 https://www.anglicanjournal.com/?p=170033#comment-44092 Mark, you so eloquently pinpoint that hope sprouted from love & rooted in faith, walks us through the pain to prepare the way of the Lord. Thank you for such succinct thought.

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