Why The Womb?

Why did God choose for us to spend the first 9 months of our lives in the womb?  What can our life in the womb tell us about how God is for us?

The womb is warm and a place of safety.  Our mother physically feeds us that we might be born into a world where we can love and be loved.  While we are in the womb of food, warmth and safety, we don’t have to do anything other than receive the gifts of love outpoured by our mother’s generous self-donation.  From day one of our lives we are surrounded by the love, thought and prayer of the one we depend on to live.  If we think about it, how could our mother be more intimately present to us than by carrying us in her womb?  In all of our human relationships could we name a greater love than the love a woman has for the child she carries in her womb?  WOW!  This is where life starts out for us- in the safety of knowing our mother’s ever present, unconditional and intimate love.

Assuming a normal pregnancy, after approximately 9 months we are then born out of the womb into the world.  In light of such disasters as Columbine High School and Kosovo, this world can be a very dangerous and loveless place.  Can we imagine how unsafe we would feel if we were the hated target of ethnic cleansing?  As we journey through our violent world we may feel like we are a million miles away from our womb experience.  However, in the midst of malicious acts that surround us in our day and age, I think God wants us to live in the womb.  But, we may say, how can we live in the womb once our mothers give birth to us?  We cannot physically go back into our mother’s stomach but we can, as Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3, be born again.  Jesus was referring to being born in a love that saves us from death and assures us that we will live forever.  This love is in our hearts and fills the world.   Actually, we can be born again and again by grabbing hold of the vision that each of us and all of creation are held within the womb of God.  Each moment of our lives on earth God surrounds us with love like a child who lives in its mother’s womb.

Life in our mother’s womb can teach us about the safety of living in God’s womb.  Our mother’s did whatever it took- they sacrificed comfort and sleep, suffered great pain- that we might have life.  If they were not unconditional in their love for us, we would not be reading this today.  Our mother’s, then, teach us about the safety of living in the womb of God’s love.  The safety of living in God’s womb is the knowledge that God will love us through it all and bring us to life.  So, regardless of how crazy and unsafe the world becomes, we can always live in the refuge of God’s womb.

Just as a mother surrounds her child in the womb with ever-present, unconditional, and intimate love, so our God surrounds us now.  The big question we have to ask is “Are we safe in God’s love?”  Safety means that we do not fear anything because we know in our hearts that we will live forever in the joy and love of Jesus.  Safety comes when we invite Jesus in to take away all fear.  Safety is real when we receive the gift of Jesus’ love like we received our mother’s love in the womb.  If we are born again in his love, we need not be the least bit threatened by such things as war, bombs or the world ending in 2000.   We have no worries because we are safe in God’s love.  Nothing or no one can take everlasting life away from us!  With God’s love, we will endure all things on earth to live forever and ever.

In the midst of this oft-times crazy and violent world, we need to remember we are living in God’s womb.  Being in the womb, we are waiting to be born fully.  Out of the womb we are now in, we will be born into something.  And whatever we are born into will last forever.  What will life be like after our new birth?  Are we safe in love or do we have unresolved questions and fear?  Jesus, in his unconditional, ever present and intimate love for us, takes away all fear.  If we’ve got Jesus, we’ve got safety.  Got Jesus?