God Gives The Greatest Good

I was talking to my son last night. I was trying to explain to him about how God loves him. Earlier that day he had asked me what a miracle was, and I thought this moment was the time to explain.

"God loves us so much that sometimes He shows us with a demonstrative sign, a sign that we can see or feel or touch, called a miracle. Like when someone is very sick and doctors have tried everything, but they can't cure the illness and then suddenly that person is well. That would be a miracle."
John responded,
"If God loved me so much, why did he give me three sisters?" John loves his sisters. He just doesn't understand why he has sisters and not brothers, which would be much more like his vision of a perfect life.

After some thought, I tried to explain to him something that most likely some church doctor has explained, and I'm just a little slow on the uptake. God gave him sisters because that is the greatest good for John.

I don't know why I never thought of the will of God like this before. We make choices, we make good choices and bad ones and even a-moral ones, and God takes those choices and gives us the greatest good from them. And we can choose how we perceive what God has given us.

I will never forget a story from a book I read in High School. I don't remember the title, but the true story happened in a concentration camp during world war two. Two sisters were suffering with bed bugs in one of the bunkers of the concentration camps. One sister insisted that they both thank God for everything, even the bed bugs, every night. They found out later that those bed bugs kept the guards from coming into the bunker and discovering their bibles. Those bed bugs were the greatest good.

But more than that, sometimes we can't even perceive what great good God has in store for us, because ultimately every thing that God gives us in life, brings us to heaven. If one chooses to take everything that is given him and loves God for it, imagine how easy his path to heaven, because that is the ultimate good. That is all God wants. He wants us to live forever with Him in heaven, and He gives us constant opportunity regardless of how many times we reject His will.

The mind of God is a mystery, but know that He only desires you, and this life is your path to heaven.

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My friend Jess reminded me the book was The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

Pain in Child Birth and Original Sin

I want to make clear that this post is not an attack on anyone. I firmly believe that people have the right and responsibility to make their own choices regarding medical care. I writing this to spark thoughts about these issues and understandings

It seems to me that women in America want very much to have painless childbirth. I can't say I blame them. It hurts... a lot. Women that are not part of my weird little tiny circle of homebirthers, say they want the drugs, there is no way they would go through that, without drugs. Obviously drugs are available and sometimes necessary, so fine. However there is a definite child birth culture that seems to demand painless child birth, and I'm a little puzzled as to why.

First of all you most likely will not get drugs up until you are almost done anyway, which means you will still have to go through hours of pain building up to that point. In my mind the contractions that are too painful to talk through are still pretty easy compared to the ones that come after the ones that are too painful to talk through, but I would never know that if I didn't go through them. That almost has nothing to do with my point.

Women have been having painful child birth since man was created. So now suddenly we have a choice to have painless vaginal childbirth, or almost painless, I think it's a case by case basis, or be totally knocked out and have a C-sec. I am only discussing these in elective cases. But are these choices truly painless, or even dramatically less painful?

The other thing is that from a Judeo-Christian stand point the pain of child birth was a specific punishment for original sin. World wide suffering and a tendency to sin are also consequences, but pain in child birth was pretty specific. In high school a girl in my religion class asked, it was more of a statement, "Because now we have epidurals, does that mean we have over come the punishment for original sin?" Though no, we haven't, it is interesting that she would make that jump. Don't you think?

Please, don't misunderstand. I am absolutely not saying that having an epidural or a C-sec or interventions for pain relief are some how sinful, or that they are a violation of the natural law. No. I am only pointing out some realities, some which may not be relevant to everyone. Just things to think about.

Because child birth is such a very personal thing. I really want to mention one more time. This is not a criticism of any person's choice in how she delivers. I just thought it was an interesting collection of thoughts.