As I write this it is the third day of Advent, and I am resting at home. I am resting at home on a weekday because I underwent surgery for endometriosis yesterday. This surgery has been a little while in the making, amidst an even longer journey of infertility for my husband and I, and our deep longing for children.
A Good Longing
To long for a child is to long for something good, for children are a gift of God. The Scriptures speak of this over and over again:
Children are a heritage from the Lord,
offspring a reward from him. (Psalm 127:3)
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. (Genesis 1:28)
Children are a good gift from God, and so, to long for children is a good longing.
An Unfulfilled Longing
And yet, for myself and many others, the longing for children goes unfulfilled. The Scriptures are full of these stories. We can think of Sarah who, in her desperation to have children, gave Hagar as a concubine to Abraham (Gen 16). Or Isaac who prayed for his wife Rebekah because she was infertile (25:21). Or Rachel, who watched her sister fall pregnant time after time, as she waited for just one child of her own (29:31–30:2). And how could we forget Hannah, who in her outpouring of grief at the temple, was mistaken by the priest Eli for being drunk: “I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the LORD” (1 Sam 1:15).
I suspect that these stories have had a deep resonance for many men and women suffering with infertility, just as they have had for me. These stories have given voice and licence to my grief. It’s incredible, isn’t it, that God has chosen to include these stories in the Scriptures?
All these men and women do finally receive the gift of children, but this is not the case for everyone. Undoubtedly many faithful men and women have not received children from the Lord even after years of waiting, longing, and praying. As much as the experiences of Sarah and Abraham, Rachel, and Hannah rightly validate our own longings, their stories are not personal promises from God that we will have our own children.
Advent: A Season of Longing
The day before my surgery was Sunday 30th November, the first Sunday of Advent. Advent marks the four weeks leading up to Christmas. It is a season of heightened anticipation in the Christian calendar, as we step into the shoes of those who awaited the coming—the advent—of the Christ child, and as we look ahead to his second coming.
It was on this first Sunday of Advent that I was rostered on to give the Bible talk at Kids’ Church. The lesson was on the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth in Luke chapter 1, and the big idea in the material was: “God promises to give a godly but childless couple a son.” I was sorely tempted to swap out my week on the roster! And yet, I knew that in God’s providence, this could be precisely what I needed. Perhaps the divine roster-er knew that he could encourage me in unexpected ways as I prepared to teach a story about childlessness on the day before my own surgery for infertility.
Zechariah and Elizabeth: A Long-awaited Child
The story of Zechariah and Elizabeth is the story of a long-awaited child. The righteous Israelite couple had longed for and prayed for children (Lk 1:13), but their hopes had been unsatisfied. They were now too old (1:7), the window of opportunity had closed. And yet into the darkness of their situation, an angel appears to Zechariah: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John” (1:13). And just as God promised through the angel, nine months later the impossible happened! Elizabeth gave birth to John, a miracle child who would bring joy to the elderly couple and to many others (1:14–15). God showed incredible kindness to Zechariah and Elizabeth in giving them John. But John wasn’t the end point.
A Long-awaited Saviour
You see, it wasn’t just Zechariah and Elizabeth who were waiting for a child. The whole nation of Israel was waiting for a child, a child who would be born in the line of David, who would save God’s people from their enemies. It might have seemed, as God’s people lived under Roman occupation, ruled by the paranoid and murderous puppet-king Herod (Matt 2:16), that God had forgotten his people; that God had forgotten his promise to establish a king on David’s throne (2 Sam 7:12). But God had not forgotten. God’s provision of John to Zechariah and Elizabeth was just the start of his new salvation plan, because John the Baptist would pave the way for God’s promised king, the Messiah, Jesus. This Jesus was the child the nation longed for, the one who was to be God’s salvation (Lk 1:69), who would rescue them from their enemies (1:71), and save them—remarkably—through the forgiveness of their sins (1:77). God had not forgotten his people or his promises.
And this brings me great comfort, even as I long for a child this Christmas. Because in a way, the season of Advent is about the longing for a child. It is about the longing for the child who would be born saviour for a weary world, walking in darkness and weighed down by sin. While I don’t know whether my husband and I will have children in the future, what I do know is that God has already provided us all we need in our saviour Jesus. Christmas is a wonderful reminder that Christ has indeed come to save us through the forgiveness of our sins. And just as the world’s yearnings for the Christ Child were satisfied 2 000 years ago, one day this same Lord Jesus will return, and all our longings will be fulfilled.
