Word for the Church: The Hatching Egg -- Hope Through Adversity

A couple of weeks ago, I stood inside my classroom, watching through the glass top of the incubator where lay nine duck eggs, carefully cared for by our classroom as an authentic learning experience for our kindergartners. As the head teacher read a story to the class, I kept an eye on one of the eggs wiggling inside the incubator. It had cracked, and I could see intense movement behind that crack as the shell widened and then retracted, widened and retracted. A webbed foot shot out between the jagged edges. It stilled as the bird inside rested for a moment. Then more struggle followed, and all at once, the back part of the shell broke free, and a baby duck backed out of it like a car from a garage. It collapsed onto the floor of the incubator in exhaustion, beeping weakly, but the hardest part was over. It had hatched.

This morning, I didn't even open up to Joshua. The Holy Spirit was speaking to my heart last night and throughout the night, and when I woke up this morning, His voice was stronger than ever. 

Yesterday, I had been thinking and praying quite a bit about the wider church, the global body of believers. As you know if you read my blog with any regularity, the Holy Spirit -- now and then -- shows me visions or pictures, or gives me specific words as a message for the church, sometimes as an encouragement, sometimes as a warning. This has mostly been over this last year as I've dived into the Scripture and pleaded with the Lord to use me as He wishes, as I've tried to get myself out of the way and let the Holy Spirit work through me. I don't know why He's seen fit to use me in this way, except that He works through the "least of these" to accomplish His purposes and plans. 

Which is pretty cool, y'all. I've witnessed the Lord move in waters I've never seen stir much before this year. "See? I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland" (Isaiah 43:19). He is doing a new thing. In this desert where so many are blind and thirsty and dying... He is bringing streams to the wasteland.

Anyway, after hours of feeling troubled yesterday about some of the dissensions and the splits that I am seeing fracture the body of Christ, I crawled into bed for sleep, praying as I did so. And the Lord brought me back to that egg that I watched being born. Remember? He asked. There was a wide crack across the width of it, and I could see it wiggling as what was inside struggled to break free. Now and then, the edges of the crack would pull slightly apart, and I could see a flash of dark, wet pin-feathers of the almost newborn. 

What is this? I asked the Lord, and He said: Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery? Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery? That's Isaiah 66:9, and I recognized it right away, but all night, I wondered what was significant about the egg. What was the Lord bringing to the moment of birth?

I've been praying for a lot of things over this past year, and especially for revival and refinement of the church. As one of my pastors put it the other week: "I pray that you will have enough adversity that will keep you clinging to Him, and enough hope that will give you rest in Him." And then, twice, from two unrelated people yesterday who have nothing to do with each other, I heard this same metaphor: "The Lord train-wrecked [her/him]." Both used that phrasing, which I thought was interesting.

As I've said before, when I hear something twice from unrelated sources, I sit up and pay attention. What are you saying, Lord? And this is perhaps why I spent so much of the day feeling troubled about the things I'm seeing happen in the wider church. 

Lord, train-wreck us, your people.

I know this is a hard concept to grasp, because who prays for pain? Who prays for heartache? Who prays for discomfort? 

And yet, without the discomfort of being too big for the little egg, without the urgent need to get out, a bird is never born. If that little duckling or chick or swan rests inside the egg for too long, is too weak, is too comfortable -- and does not break out on its own, it dies. It stays inside its shell, and the shell grows still, and the spark of life that may have once been there -- flees away.

And here's the word for the church that the Holy Spirit gave me this morning: We are in a struggle for birth. We are fighting the fight for emergence from that shell, but some of us are too comfortable inside of it. Or are too weak to break out of it. Or aren't aware that we need to break through the shell in order to breathe life-giving air.

Some of us are struggling, but the struggle is taking too long and we're losing hope, losing strength. We see the eggs around us that have grown still and we think, they're resting, maybe it's okay for me to rest, too, and we don't necessarily realize -- the other eggs have given up the fight, have died in the long haul. 

So here's the reminder from Scripture, from the Lord Himself: "Do I bring to the moment of birth... and not give delivery?" Isaiah 65:17-19 says: "Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more."

Once we're born, we don't remember that struggle, do we? Thank the Lord for that -- whew! I really don't want to remember being born. 

So this morning, I asked the Lord what it was that He was bringing to birth, and He brought me back to the egg He'd shown me the night before. As I watched, a white bird took flight from the leavings of the shell and flew away. One of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems came to mind: Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.

You know, sometimes I think hope gets discounted, because according to 1 Corinthians 13, hope is secondary to love. Faith sometimes gets discounted, as well, because it's not as great as love. But lest we forget, "these three remain -- faith, hope, and love" and while love is the greatest of the three, the other two are essential elements of the Christian walk.

What do I hope for? 

This promise, for one thing: "I saw the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will live in hope, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay (Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?). You have made known to me the paths of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence" (Acts 2:25-28).

And this prophesy, for another thing: "In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved" (Acts 2:17-21). 

Why would you hope for that, Tamara? Blood, fire, billows of smoke? Sun turned to darkness? Moon to blood? 

Because, y'all, our focus is not on the egg shell, but on the breaking free from that shell. Our focus is on the eternal life that comes after the adversity, that comes out of the pain. Our hope is in Jesus, Who gives us -- freely -- the life after the struggle, the rebirth out of the train-wreck.

Unless we content ourselves with staying inside, and believing that the shell is all there is. Please don't make that mistake. It's a costly one.