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Christianity Today, December, 2007 |

Blessed Are the Barren

The kingdom of God springs forth from the empty womb.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson | posted 12/07/2007 09:21AM

Elizabeth and Zechariah mark the end of an old covenant, just as they mark the beginning of Luke's gospel. Both are righteous, walking blamelessly in all the statutes and commands of the Lord. Elizabeth ...

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Rebecca

Posted: December 14, 2007 12:47 AM

Thank you for this article. It ministered to me. As an adoptive mother and as a barren woman I find that it speaks many of my own thoughts and feelings. I so appreciated Ms. Wilson's use of Scripture and her openness in sharing her heart. Rachel and Sarah cheated with servant girls in that they offered them to their husbands to conceive children. And I didn't see any implicaion in the article that Zachariah wasn't the biological father of John; on the contrary he and Elizabeth are mentioned as parents given a baby in old age. (Just felt like I had to say something about previous comments!) The pain of an empty womb doesn't go away even when you have wonderful adopted children that you love dearly. But it is a blessing to see how God can bring joy and good out of heartache. And to glimpse to a tiny degree the love of God for us, His adopted children.

TKS	Posted: December 13, 2007 1:18 PM


What utter Rot. Adoption involves many things, but it certainly doesn't involve dying to the "immortality of the bloodline". Our children are adopted, but we will live on in them. We are passing our beliefs, hopes, and traditions on to our children to pass on to the next generation. What a horribly morbid and disgusting view of adoption.

DEOR	Posted: December 12, 2007 9:43 AM

This article was a blessed word of the Lord for my life. As a woman in her thirties, still single and struggling with cronic endometriosis, barrenness is a very real, pressing situation. I thank God for the Spirit of adoption and the renewed hope this words have brought into my heart. And yes, it has also helped me to see adopting a child in a whole different light. It is beautiful to know that I have a place in the family of God.

mr po from hong kong

Posted: December 11, 2007 8:19 PM

good mixing of bible and personal stories.....i like the plots.....like pitching one against another......ultimately coming to a resolution of a kind......in view of the intensity of the subject matter.......it has been particularly absorbing to read..... i wonder why the old and the new covenants are so much different as regards the family.....or seemingly so......as single persons......jesus and paul might be more naturally inclined towards the eschaton.......and befitting as founders of chrisitanity......come to think about it......there may be some truth in the roman catholic vows of monks and nuns......

JMG	Posted: December 11, 2007 3:24 PM

My wife and I found out a year after our marriage that we would never have children. Since that time we adopted one child and have become guardians of two more. All of these kids came to us as teens or pre-teens. No midnight feedings, no diapers, no colic. However, no first step. No first word. No toddler seeing you as the centre of their universe. No chance to lay a foundation of godly character that might take them through the hard times. The finality of the fact that there will NEVER be a child to carry the combination of our combined uniquenesses is always there. Do we dwell on it morbidly? No. Have we given it to God? Oh yes! Does my wife still cry in my arms at times mourning for the baby that will never be? Oh yes! Barrenness is a tragedy. Abortion is a tragedy. But my experience leads me to wonder if perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is not when children are brought into the world by those who don"t want them, and won't care for them.

Cathy

Posted: December 10, 2007 10:29 PM


John the Baptist was in fact Zechariah's son, children produced through in vitro fertilization are indeed born out of their parent's love, and unless I've grossly misunderstood something, the anti-girl comments are odd and off-putting.

Sid	Posted: December 09, 2007 5:01 PM


Wow, a very,very insightful article, thanks so much!

Nelson

Posted: December 09, 2007 3:04 PM

Me and my wife have an almost similar story as this. We are christians and the way we end up with our adopted son(now 5 years old) is His answers to our prayers,we are really sure of this. Now we are a happy family and the challenge to raise our son to be fully aware of his identity is an excitement. This article only confirms my encounter with God through His word when we were on the early stage of adoption(sorry for clicking first on only one star on the rating, it should have been ten stars)

1journeyman

Posted: December 09, 2007 2:48 PM


Thank you !!!!!!!!

Tony	Posted: December 09, 2007 7:47 AM


Absolutely the best article I have read. I am a older single woman and a christian for 30 years. I will never have children and I struggle with considering adopting as a single. AWESOME.

Reader

Posted: December 08, 2007 9:58 PM


I am confused by this article; it reads that Rachel and Sarah cheated with servant girls? Is that a misprint? Shouldn't it be servant boys?

William Meisheid

Posted: December 08, 2007 11:30 AM

My daughter gave me a great gift on my last birthday. When I met my wife I was the vehicle God used to bring her to himself. She was also two weeks pregnant and in transit. We married five months later, which meant my name went on the birth certificate of our daughter. My daughter is now 30 and unmarried (not for the lack of prayerful seeking). In her birthday card she thanked me for the sacrifice I made for her and told me that I mirrored for her the love of God, since as Christians we are all adopted in Christ. She saw in my willingness to take her as my own a real life example of what God is doing in her spiritually. It was probably the single most loving thing she has ever said to me and I will treasure it always.

Kevin

Posted: December 08, 2007 6:15 AM

The scriptures do not say that John was not Zachariah's biological son, as the author seems to imply. The angel announced that Elizabeth would conceive by Zachariah (Luke 1:13 "bear you a son"). Jesus is the only person to ever be born apart from the natural procreation process. This was a wonderful miracle of God that he quickened the past prime and barren bodies of Zachariah and Elizabeth to glorify his holy name. Please don't feel I am straining at a gnat here, but I feel it is important that everyone understands only Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit of God apart from a earthly father. This is a great article and I was touched deeply by it. Praise the Lord.

Karen Grier

Posted: December 08, 2007 5:19 AM


well done!!

Ephrem Hagos

Posted: December 08, 2007 12:43 AM

The act of a man and his wife becoming one flesh, far from being a sexual one of making babies, is a divine act of introducing in each of them (like in Adam and Eve) the very image of God, i.e., the Spirit or the indissoluble factor bonding the two individuals for good. The resulting love does not need children to glorify it. With or without children, such love is its own fruit! It is a deep secret reflecting the greater divine mystery applying to Christ and the Church (Eph. 5: 21-33). There is no happier blessing than such a union in and by itself! The barren are blessed indeed! It is no coincidence that Jesus is quoted as uttering this blessing on the very day of His crucifixion and death --the same day (whether we know it or not) the Holy Spirit was poured out for everyone! Check it out!!!!!!!!

struggling

Posted: December 07, 2007 11:29 PM


Thank you for this well-written and insightful article. It completely echos the epic struggle we are having with infertility, the responses from well-meaning friends and family, and the desire to see God in all of this. Thank you for showing the deep connection between barrenness, adoption and God's redemptive work in Christ. Awesome. Again, thank you so much.

John Jim

Posted: December 07, 2007 11:24 PM


Thanks for revealing God's truths as a family. Thanks also for the amazing perspective on adoption.

Not barren

Posted: December 07, 2007 7:54 PM

Thank you for this article, and although I have one child, I can feel some of her pain. But ours is different. While we can have more children, we have been advised not to because of the severe health risks involved. To not be able to have children and seeing others with children is bad. To be able to have children, but warned against it, and then seeing your friends and family having more children - is murder.

Elizabeth

Posted: December 07, 2007 6:36 PM


I think this is a best article on the barreness I ever read. Thank you

Pam Mathews

Posted: December 07, 2007 6:05 PM

I really appreciate this article and hope it will bring comfort and hope to the many couples who experience infertility. Going through infertility, I was greatly comforted by the fact that God's heart seems to break for the infertile couples in the Bible and that Jesus' birth can actually be traced through a long line of previously infertile women. However, after having a biological child "the normal way", we went the route of "harvesting" (author's word choice) and had children not only through IVF but also through a gestational surrogacy (meaning the children are ours biologically, but carried by a friend). We personally found that God's presence and grace can also be very present in that kind of experience and relationship. The author also seems to strongly object to having a child that did not result directly from sex. I respect her opinions, but I can also say that for us and our children (now ages 9+), this issue was and continues to be of almost zero importance.

Single and barren

Posted: December 07, 2007 4:55 PM

This is one of the most poignantly lovely and painful articles i have read: thank you for your honesty and deeply felt struggle that has resulted in your heart's anguish blessing many. I love the Is. 54 passage as a single and have claimbed it as my own...i never saw the theological richness of adoption troughout the scriptures. Wow. Thank you. I am sending it to several friends who either adopted or are struggling with it.

Ms_Meek

Posted: December 07, 2007 2:25 PM

I am truly afraid to rate this article because of the finality of being barren. I know that there are a lot of women who are barren and have probably accepted their barrenness but I haven't attained that place yet. My heart still yearns for a child of my own womb. Am I crazy to believe that GOD will open my womb? Am I wrong to still believe in miracles? What about hope in GOD or trust in GOD! Should I just give up and stop believing (not in GOD but in having a baby)! I too said "No" to in-vitro fertilization but now I don't know. If this is my last option, should I not try it? I have nothing against adoption, I just don't think it's for me. I have a 19-month old step-son whom I love like he's my own but I know that he's not my own. He won't call me "Mommy" like he calls my husband, "Daddy". I'm hoping that GOD will answer my prayer because right now, I feel like a failure or better yet, that I'm cursed. I'm crying out to GOD like Hannah did! I can't give up!

Also barren...

Posted: December 07, 2007 1:37 PM

I have been waiting to see an article like this for almost 30 years. My husband and I suffered through ten long years of barrenness. Other Christians didn't know how to treat us -- they either shied away or they asked us what type of sin we must be allowing in our lives that would cause God to curse us. It was an almost unbearable season of pain. As we sought the Lord, we knew that He was leading us toward adoption. And, only a month after we prayed for a child, He brought us our first miracle newborn baby to adopt, and within a few more years, another beautiful newborn to add to our family. Now our two beautiful children are grown and happily married themselves, and as a pastor and professor I have had numerous opportunities to explain the parallels between our family's experience and the spiritual experience of all Christians being adopted children in Abba's family. In hindsight I can truly say that I am barren, but I have been more than exceedingly blessed by the Lord!

Merle Hagerty

Posted: December 07, 2007 12:38 PM


I give this article 5 stars. After ecently discussing barrenness with a friend (we are both grandmothers), but not having expericenced it myself, I intend to keep this article for future reference because it explains some of the emotional adjustments people who are barren, or people who adopt, experience. I love the use of the Biblical illustrations!

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