LIVING IN THE WOMB OF GOD
A meditation by the Rev. Dr. James G. Kirk
Harundale Presbyterian Church
Text: “In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts
First
Second
We find
Paul in
Aware that his audience is probably well educated and used to using the forum in front of the Areopagus to debate important issues, he then quotes from what would be two well-known sources, a philosopher and a poet. Now I’ve read that quote numerous times before, have even used it in some of my prayers, but it never dawned on me in the past just how important that statement is. “In God we live and move and have our being.” What Paul’s done is provide us a metaphor, which could have very helpful implications. That is to say, we live in the womb of God.
Next week, we’re going to celebrate Mother’s Day. It’ll be a big day when kids are expected to get something nice for their mothers. It’s a day when we’ll all remember our mothers. Yet, some say it will be a difficult day, since not all women have been blessed with the gift of children. Much has been written lately about career women who’ve seemingly waited too long to have children. They’ve devoted their time and energies to their careers, with the understanding that they could conceive at a later time in their life. Now that they’re more established and ready, they find that their fertility has waned and they’re having difficulty conceiving.
So, from that perspective Mother’s Day next Sunday will be a mixed blessing, a time of celebration for some and a time of distress for others. But, what if we were to use the occasion to take Paul seriously and consider the motherhood of God, that indeed we do live and move and have our being in God, and that our life is lived in God’s womb. God would then become the all encompassing source of our nurture. Christ would be our brother, the means by which God relates to us. The Holy Spirit would be the umbilical cord through which we receive the necessary nourishment to sustain us on a daily basis.
We could go on to say that when we suffer God feels our distress and suffers with us. When we stray from God’s will we cause a breach in the birthing process, which has to be corrected, and Christ exists with us in God’s womb to set us aright. If all of that fits then life as we know it each day is nothing more than preparation for our birth into life eternal, which is what the waters of our baptism remind us, since we live, move and have our being surrounded by those very same waters.
What that would do would be to take Mother’s Day out of the market place with all of its commercialization and potential for disappointment and make it an important day in the life of the church. It would help us to stop concentrating so much on God as our heavenly Father and give us a day to think of God as our heavenly Mother as well. It would be a day to celebrate the nurture God gives us, just as we thank God for our mothers who put up with us and helped us to become the persons we are today. It would be a day to thank God for the many blessings God gives us each day, the protection from harm, the guidance through difficult times, the unique gifts God bestows upon us. It would be a day to recognize how we are all sisters and brothers in God’s womb. We are family with all that that means. We can’t escape, ignore or ultimately harm one another, because at the same time we might be harming God.
Paul concludes our scripture, “While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” Until that day comes we just might use Mother’s Day to celebrate all that God has done for us as we live together in God’s womb.
Thanks be to God,
Amen