God as an African Mother
Imagine God in a hospital room where there is pushing, groaning, and gasping as a mother gives birth to a child. By the way, the mom - the one that everyone is standing around – is God.
In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome he wrote, “In the same way … the Spirit [of God] himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” This causes us to ask, “’In the same way’ as what?”
That question will lead us to the verses imediately before where Paul wrote, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth ... and we ourselves … groan inwardly.” The Spirit of God groans along with creation and us in the pangs of childbirth.
This is not a deity who stands far off and winces when he considers the pain of mere mortals. This is a God who carries our pain within him - even pain as intense as childbirth. Which naturally raises the question, “God knows what it’s like to have a baby?” It appears so.
The prophet Isaiah points us toward this when God speaks about his panting and gasping “like a woman in childbirth.” The Hebrew and Greek word for “compassion” - so often attributed to God - come from the root for the word “womb.” This understanding of God led St. Clement of Alexandria to say “… in His compassion to us God became Mother.”
God knows quite a bit about being a mother. That means he is acquainted with the pain of childbirth, which causes the groaning of creation and makes us groan inwardly. That kind of pain is something that only moms can truly understand.
At least that’s what my friend Pam told me. She coaches soon-to-be moms through childbirth. Some time ago we were having a discussion about her job and she said to me, “My job is to help women have a good birth.”
A “good birth,” she explained, is when women surrender to the pain because they know there is benefit. This can only happen, however, when other moms are with her in the pain. That’s when she told of certain places in Africa where a woman in childbirth is never alone.
When a mother goes into labor the moms in her community come, place their hands on her, wail, cry out, gasp, and groan with the mom giving birth. Their sheer presence and ability to feel the pain with the woman in childbirth doesn’t remove the pain, but allows the mom to surrender to it. The benefit in all of this?
New life. Something miraculous happens the moment a child is placed into the arms of the mother - the pain is somehow suspended and the mother understands the benefit.
How can all of creation and all of us ever surrender to the pain to find the benefit? Because we serve a God who, like an African mother, knows the pain. So he gasps, pants, and groans with us until through the pains of childbirth.
Until at last, through His miraculous grace we discover that all the pain, suffering, and brokenness will bring about new life.