12. God is a Woman in Labor, with Christiana Rice

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Christiana Rice shares a powerful image.

God is a woman giving birth and we are the midwife attending to God and to the new life that is coming into the world.  That’s the image we’ll be unpacking in this episode of Spiritual Life and Leadership.  It’s not an image that normally comes to mind when we think about God. But it certainly isn’t unbiblical. Listen to how God describes himself (herself?) in Isaiah 42:14:

“For a long time I have kept silent,
 I have been quiet and held myself back.
 But now, like a woman in childbirth,
 I cry out, I gasp and pant.”

Christiana Rice unpacks this powerful and visceral image in this episode of Spiritual Life and Leadership.

THIS EPISODE’S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Christiana Rice wrote a book with Michael Frost called To Alter Your World.
• A key metaphor in Christiana Rice’s book portrays God as giving birth and the world as a midwife, joining with God to bring new life into the world.
• Scripture portrays God in Isaiah as a woman in labor, groaning and panting, to give birth the new Israel.
• Christiana asked, if God is the one giving birth, then who are we? We must be the attendants.
• “Midwife” means “with woman.” To be a midwife is more about being “with” than about controlling the outcome.
• The role of being with a woman in labor is incredibly intimate and vulnerable.
• A midwife must enter a birth with humility, recognizing that this birth with will be utterly unique. She must let go her expectations.
• As we attend to what God is birthing in the world, we, likewise, must be open to the new thing that is coming to life. We, too, must let go our expectations.
• The midwife knows that she is not the one giving birth. Likewise, we are not the ones giving birth; God is.
• Christiana Rice gives an example of how God birthed something new in her neighborhood schools. But it took time. And it required faithfully attending to the labor of God in her neighborhood.
• Christiana Rice shares about her ministry with Thresholds in San Diego.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• Christiana Rice 
  • Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/christiana.rice
  • Twitter:  @ctianarice
• Thresholds 
  • Website:  http://thresholdscommunity.org/
• To Alter Your World: Partnering with God to Rebirth Our Communities, by Michael Frost and Christiana Rice
• Michael Frost 
  • Twitter: @michaelfrost6

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