Tag: childbirth

O God, you search me and you know me

Nursing mother. Rashid Mbago, Tanzania
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “O God, you search me and you know me” by Bernadette Farrell. By coincidence, it’s another setting of Psalm 139 (as on Friday last).  Unlike the Taizé chant, which was set for cantor and congregation, this is a more straightforward congregational hymn or metrical psalm in five verses.

There’s therefore not much to add to what I wrote a few days ago, other than that (maybe because it’s by a female composer?) she includes the verse “You created me and shaped me, gave me life within my mother’s womb”.  We who are not able to give birth obviously miss out on the joys, as well as the pains, of this experience common to nearly half the human race, but I presume it deeply affects any mother’s attitude to life, to have participated herself in bringing one or more people into the world.

Those who insist on referring to God only by male pronouns are missing much feminine imagery in the Bible of God as mother. As she spoke through Isaiah, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”

The Bible in a Year – 16 June

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

16 June. Hosea chapters 8-14

In this second half of Hosea we see as clearly as anywhere in the Bible the tension that exists in the Godhood between retribution for human sin, and compassion for his creatures.  Neither on its own is enough to describe our creator.  A God of justice and punishment, without compassion, would be unbearable; but one who always showed love and forgiveness without responding to the suffering that comes from human sin would be unrealistic.

 

The other thing that comes out strongly in this book of prophecy is feminine imagery.  In the first half there was an extended metaphor of whoredom (prostitution) as a way of describing the shock and disgust that God himself feels when those who are supposed to worship him give their love and attention to false gods or vain idols.

 

In this second half there are many references to conception, childbirth and breastfeeding. These are used mainly in a negative sense of Ephraim (Israel):  “No birth, no pregnancy, no conception! Even if they bring up children, I will bereave them until no one is left… Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts” (9:12,14).  “The pangs of childbirth come for [Ephraim], … at the proper time he does not present himself at the mouth of the womb.” (13:13).

 

But there is also a very tender feminine image of God’s love: “Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.” (11:3-4).

 

Maybe it was Hosea’s marriage to a prostitute (at God’s command) that made him more aware of women’s bodies than most men of the time.  Perhaps also he was more involved in childcare than most men of his time.  And maybe his own love for his wife despite her background either sprang from, or opened him to, an understanding of God’s caring and redeeming love.  These are all guesses, but what is certain is that God is both father and mother, a parent who both disciplines and yet still loves his people.