Sometimes it is the most obvious things that we fail to thank God for in our lives. The following is a meditation on the grace of birth.
Yesterday was my sister’s thirty-fifth birthday.
Half-way—according to Psalm 90,
which teaches us to number our days,
more by what is left than by what is behind.
On that day, I read for devotions:
“By You I have been upheld from birth;
You are He who took me out of my mother’s womb.”
I thought, “Have I ever thanked God for my birth?”
—not for the gift of life, which I have often done on a birthday,
but for the birth itself.
According to the Psalms, the womb is a cave:
“My frame was not hidden from You,
when I was made in secret,
and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.”
How many never survive the cave!
How many die in transit to the light!
Stillborn—O God, comfort the heart of parents!
But to me was given life from the womb,
and now in Christ Jesus, life from the tomb,
—in Him who first “descended into the lower parts of the earth,”
but now has “ascended far above all the heavens” to fill all things.
Continually, O Lord, may my praise be of You!
Spring Branch Academy - Jonesville, Michigan 