Good morning…
One of the books we are studying in my living room this semester is Margaret Silf’s The Other Side of Chaos: Breaking Through When Life Breaks Down. On pages 5 and 6, we read:
“Transitions make you ache everywhere. They make you ache, in every joint and muscle and in every brain cell, and in every fiber of your heart. Some of these transitions we freely choose. Some are thrust upon us against our will. Some just creep up quietly while we’re not looking and take us unawares. But they all have this in common: they change us, whether we like it or not, and they usually don’t give us the option of going back… Are times of transition simply chaotic periods we have to survive the best we can, or might they mean more – much more – than that? Might they actually be times when something radically new is gestating within us and painfully coming to birth?”
Something new is gestating within each of us. I love that concept and I love that word. Gestating. Certainly, a fetus physically gestates in the mother’s womb, week-by-week growth can be tracked by those fascinating picture books. More broadly, to gestate is to conceive of and develop something new slowly, gradually, bit by bit. An idea. An opinion. A lifelong dream. To grow a vision, to form a concept, or to visualize something mentally. Gestation requires uncomfortable expansion, being stretched beyond one’s current state, patiently waiting for a God-implanted seed to grow from inside out.
What is the first word or phrase that pops into your mind when you prayerfully ponder, “LORD, what are You gestating in me?”
The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re…feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy (Romans 8:24-25, MSG).
…Sue…
