lessons learned in childbirth

as most of you know by now, we are now the new parents of our third baby boy, logan jeremiah.  and if there is one thing that i have learned in life, it's that God can teach you anything, anytime, anywhere.  all you have to do is look around (and having a decent working knowledge of His Word doesn't hurt either).

while watching my little baby be born, i was taken aback by the miracle of it all.  but the thing that struck me most is how being a father is an idea that originates with God, and His relationship with us as His children.  when Jesus was talking to nicodemus in john, He told nicodemus that unless a person is born again, they cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.  watching my son, and being overjoyed, i could not wait to tell everyone i saw.  i even made up birth announcements in the form of candy bar wrappers that i spent hours creating, just to tell everyone everything about logan's arrival.  the nurses in the mother-baby ward commented that i was "bouncing" around the hall.  it then hit me how God must feel when He sees a person being born into the kingdom.  stop for a minute and imagine the celebration that must take place in heaven.  can you imagine the conversations?  how Jesus might go around and tell everyone that another new birth happened and a new babe in Christ has arrived into the kingdom!  this may seem ludicrous to most, but God mentions being a father more than a few times in Scripture, and if God is our model for fatherhood, then He must have put in us the same emotions and feelings He feels as well.

the other thing i learned was while watching two of my family suffer.  after a cesarean, lori was naturally very sore, and even in what i would call excruciating pain.  and the first few hours after logan was born, he was having serious breathing difficulties and had to spend the day in the level 2 nursery hooked up to a cpap.  the common sentiment i felt in seeing both of my loved ones in that condition was one of helplessness.  while God is not helpless, He must feel some sort of grief in seeing His children suffering the consequences of a fallen world and being unable to stop it and still be true to His holiness and justness.  but the thing that struck me most is that if i could have, i would have gladly taken the place of my wife and son to ease their suffering.  the difference between God and myself, is that not only was God able to, He actually came down and took our place, so that we could escape the eternal suffering we would have experienced otherwise. 

so the next time you look around you, think about what God could possibly teach you through whatever circumstance you find yourself in.  you might just be surprised at how God reveals Himself through that still, small voice.  we just have to learn to be quiet to hear it.