An Inconvenient Blessing

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
-Psalm 127:3-5

A good friend of mine got married on May 27th, 2006. Yesterday, he and his wife announced that they are expecting a baby, with a March 19th, 2007 due date! According to a calculator at parenthood.com, the likely date of conception was June 26th, or just a shade under a month after they said "I do."

And no, it wasn't an "accident."

My wife and I got pregnant about 5 months after we were married, and at that time several of our friends from church asked us, you know, if we had, um, been "trying" or not. Our frank answer was that we weren't trying not to!

The assumption behind this question, I believe, was that we couldn't possibly have wanted to have a child so soon into our marriage. The big idea as I understand it is that you're supposed to wait at least a few years before you start "trying" so that you and your newly-wed spouse can have a joyful, wonderful, blessed season of "just the two of us" where you can focus on your marriage and "get it right" before you have to deal with the inconvenient blessing of children.

This attitude was expressed by another of our friends yesterday as we talked about the expecting couple's news. Mrs. X, as she will be called, said that she felt bad for the couple. Surprised, I said that we were thrilled for them and that we couldn't imagine a better blessing, especially given that the couple was frequently and passionately praying that God would soon bless them with a child. Mrs. X replied that she was, of course, excited for them because babies are really exciting, but that "realistically" she was concerned that they wouldn't have the childless season as mentioned above.

–An aside– I don't mean to pick on Mrs. X because this statement could have been made by just about anyone in any church anywhere in America. If you guess who Mrs. X is, please don't hold it against her. I definitely don't.

Speaking "realistically," we Christians have done a pretty poor job of understanding what God says about marriage, children, and the godly family. We consider our children to be a burden, an interruption to our otherwise perfect lives. God tells us that children are a blessing, even a reward to us. The Bible calls children a reward from the Creator and Sustainer of our universe, but we seem to think that they are to be avoided so that we can have the lifestyle or standard of living that we feel is best for us.

It's amazing that pills and condoms have done more to shape the American Christian's view of children than the Bible has. Continue reading this post »