A Labor of Love

 

               Birth is beautiful, but it is gruesome. 

               Birth is sweet, but it is painful.

               Christmas season for believers is all centered around celebration of Jesus's birth. You can easily find handfuls of nativity scenes with the serene, baby Jesus all wrapped up in a manger. We sing songs of joy and exclamation and excitement that the Savior has been born.

                 I think, like many of us, when I picture Jesus's birth I imagine this comforting, angelic, and tender moment, but then I became a labor and delivery nurse and realized that night was quite the opposite.

                  I've seen multitudes of births. I was shocked to see how frightful it actually is to deliver a child, it is not for the faint of heart to watch. I've seen the looks of fear and intense pain on mothers faces as they push and bring forth their newborn into the world.

                Yet, despite the gruesomeness of the actual birth the moment the child is born and placed on the mother's chest it is as if the world has stopped. I've witness mothers, who moments before were pleading and crying out, be so full of joy when that baby is laid on them. They tend to completely forget the many hours of pain they just endured and are so wrapped up in this moment of seeing their newborn. The birth experience can truly best be described as a labor of love.

               Seeing so many deliveries really made me view Jesus's birth differently. Having a first child is pretty frightening and Mary did it alone, with no nurses to help comfort her or doctors to explain what was happening. It wasn't a sterile hospital room with a baby warmer waiting, it was a dark and cold and bloody stable. There wasn't family gathered around to care for and celebrate them and the baby after. Christ's birth story was truly was a labor of love.

               Having this realistic image of Christ's birth just reminds me that He relates to us so much more than we realize. That the King of Kings was willing to be born in such a human and humble way. He could've just appeared or come in some mighty way, but instead He came into this world through labor and pain. How much more does this show us that He can sympathize with us? Jesus is not some mighty King who is distant and far from us, but He is a high priest who understands and has experienced the brokenness this world has to offer. There is nothing we can face in this life that He was not faced with and we can take comfort in that this Christmas season. 

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians 2:5-8

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:15