Today I am away from home unfortunately not well at all. It started with great fatigue and became chronic back pain and knee joint pain. Couldn’t even get out of the shower.

This last weekend I did ministry on “Carrying the New Things of God”. Pregnancy featured strongly. We examined the life of Samuel, John the Baptist, and the Messiah Himself, and Hannah, Elizabeth, and Mary.

We are fast approaching Advent in the Church calendar. Pregnancy is physically changing the Body to carry the child. It is how God brought Samuel, John and Jesus to be conceived. For Hannah God has shut her womb. For Elizabeth she had become past childbearing age.

For Mary she was a Virgin, never known a man. So in all these 3 examples there is something beyond normal. And with the blessing of “carrying” there is a physical price, aches and pains of a changing body, tiredness, nausea etc.

Somehow I have taken on these symptoms in a very violent way. Yet I draw comfort that even though I am celebrating my birthday far from home and desirous of being with family, I draw comfort that in these examples out of the ordinary there is a divine objective. New things from God always take time to develop and we must carry them. They are unseen for a while. The more we speak and grow in anticipation it’s like the womb of a pregnant woman that grows. This year has seen a growth in the Word, the ministering of the Word, the people God has put me along my path.

May God bless us all in incredible changes where we may need to have a season of “carrying” before “bearing”. Bearing a child is a joyful and painful occasion. In the carrying season we know the conceiving of God in our being. The Holy Spirit births something in us. It is invisible. Yet once it is brought forth like how the Messiah birthed and grew so the impact to the world is visible. What we forget however is the mother that carried with patience and pain.

So with pains on this birthday I take my comfort with these examples so that in the comfort may come the healing too.

Shalom.