AP

Isaiah 54:1-3  “Sing, barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labour; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the LORD. “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.  For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.”

God tells us in Psalm 127, the eighth of the fifteen ‘Songs of Ascent’, “Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from him.  Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth.  Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.  They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court.” (verses 3-5).  I can certainly vouch for the truth contained in these verses.  My children were born in the decade 1969-1979, and my grandchildren from 1993 to 2010, and I cannot overstate the blessing this ‘quiverful’ has been to me, especially since the Lord took their mother home to himself last year!

Some of us, for reasons known only to God, are unable to have children although we would desperately love to – and, when this is the case, Isaiah’s word from the LORD himself can seem strange and even hurtful.  But reflecting on our different experiences, I hear Isaiah saying to all of us, whether he blesses us with children or blesses us without them, that having spiritual children is what can give us real joy.  He makes me realise the immeasurable depth of feeling in Jesus’ words at the end of his parable about the lost sheep: “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” (Luke 15:7)

The faithful Prophet is telling us that infertility is more than offset by the rejoicing that can be experienced by being part of the process God is using to build up and expand his Kingdom of believers throughout the world!  Sadly, the OT Church, Israel, did not ever get to see it fulfilled to them as a nation.  But the NT Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, the True ‘Israel’, is seeing it fulfilled in amazing, awe-inspiring ways as the Gospel is spread throughout our world.  And even more amazing and awe-inspiring (and humbling) is the fact that our Sovereign God who calls people to himself through faith in Jesus, and draws them in by irresistible grace through his Holy Spirit, condescends to use us, and the feeble witness of our lives and testimonies, to carry out his unstoppable expansion programme throughout the world!  As praying, mission-supporting people, we can ‘burst into song’ and ‘shout for joy’, we can ‘enlarge the place of [our] tent, stretch [our] tent curtains wide without ‘holding back’; we can ‘spread out to the right and to the left’ as [our spiritual] descendants ‘dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.’  Let us all therefore ‘Rejoice’!  Soli Deo Gloria!

– Bruce Christian