2024-10-09 A Meditation on Birth Pains

“3 As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. 5 For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. 6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. 9 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. 10 And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. 11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Matt 24:3-14 ESV)

All manner of voyaging through thought, this brings to birth a readiness a little prepped and primed for what Tomorrow brings: the headstrong angular Engagement with a world that slaughters the innocents, that hunts down and that yet avoids finding those peaceful reposes and idylls such as are found in truth graciously all around the world. We are in birth pains, men and women, for a Tomorrow War that shall tax our notions of abundant space, of flourishing, of ping-pong ideas bouncing around. War is abrupt and curtailing of our largesse. It is deadly and macabre towards our “one more day, please” love affair with Patience, with Learning, with Contributing, with Volunteering, with Serving.

All such that the birth pangs reverberate through waves of weary-eyed patient ones, those who crowd around the manger scene, those who crowd around the house whose roof is cut open to lower a paralytic unto Christ and His own. Those who crowd around a solemn Fact: that on that distant hill, someone once attested to from On High: “This is my son, with whom I am well pleased”, now facing headstrong and forward the crucifixion of all good morals, all good lifestyles, all good healings, all good patient prayer hours and shared meals together.

Or is that too reductive? What was crucified was our Lord. And on this track He set out from that first Encounter with Divine Mandate. He had a few things ‘round here to bring to fruition, some birth pangs of a suffering servant, who felt in His body the angst and urgency, the future War around just whom is and might have been this Christ Child spoken of by the wise men.

By the sages, who are tickled with relevance for having descended from their lofty realms unto a knowledge of the plans On High. They were close, and they bore witness to the Gesticulations and Weeping and Abrupt Heave-Ho of Mary. Whose family was done up plus one. Whose family allowed space for Jesus to begin to motion and gaze at the horizon of view as it shifted, shifted just for Him, all things subservient to where He set His gaze.

There is a sense of readiness that defies all protests that we stay in our sin. There is a sense of peaceful war-readiness that is accomplished in thinking through such ideas as what-all we are bringing to birth. That is on the defense around Tomorrows slaughter, because strangely we can all sign on to the same Cause on a level perhaps sociological rather than militant, perhaps mystery rather than bald aggression, perhaps united rather than dubiously suspected. Where, you say, is this golden elixir? It is something beyond the ken of the intel and pragmatic observations of most agents trained in might and power, in suspicions and hawkish modalities. They did not count on a Christ. They did not count on a strange Counterpoint. They did not understand that His so-called Dominion was no threat to the earthly powers that be, except insofar as their risings and fallings are a moot point, a granted or given Fact, but that truly to Love is truly to Sympathize and Commiserate, that together there is a Tomorrow War already won.

A sign appointed for the rising and falling of many. A sign opposed. A sign surpassing so much tradition, yet in all righteousness fulfilling it. We can pray God Himself be immediate and astutely Present in the gathering. We can refuse to dictate prayer disciplines and means of “drawing closer”, if those will discourage the sore thumb in the room, or the one who feels they are the sore thumb in the room. Someone is being judged, until Anointing comes to their body, mind, and soul. God is patient and appropriate to meet each where they are, here and now, readying for Tomorrow, led by a wild-eyed prophet in John the Baptist, and in all things post-intentionality: our prayer is that we might receive what He wills, not according to our own petitionary requests, but to have died like a seed, in order that a tree might grow. This is our Intention coming to birth. These are our both birth pains and Tomorrow War around the innocents. Ideas vulnerable: “Hey! That ain’t fun! That hurt!” Such is the reality of our walls caving in, and all life reoriented around the militant Cause, a militancy derived from True Battles of Will and each soldiers’ inner turmoil. What, after all, is the patient Love for the least and the forgotten? What, after all, is the fighting position unrelenting, the rebuke of demonic helter-skelter and the purr and affirmation of such wondrous ideas as are inspired in a seed who has died.