Isaiah 26.7-9,12,16-19; Ps 101; Matthew 11.28-30
The land of ghosts will give birth Isaiah promises; and our response to that prophecy will inevitably be scepticism. But ‘giving birth’ is one of Isaiah’s favourite metaphors. If a ‘land of ghosts’—a defeated, depopulated area—can give birth to new sons and daughters, then there is hope for us as well.
Travail is the slightly old-fashioned word for the particular labour a mother experiences in giving birth. It was the word chosen in the oldest English translations of the Bible for Jesus’s words to those who labour and are overburdened. The word suggests that our labour, with its attendant excruciating pain, is going to be proved fruitful. A child will be born of our efforts. [cf John 16.21]
The only way that can be true, though, is if we shoulder the yoke and submit to the discipline of pupillage. If we take up our crosses (the burden of our own lives) and follow in the path that he leads us we will find that the road does not end at Calvary, but far beyond it. Not only will others’ corpses rise and give birth: our own mortal life, handed over to God in its entirety, will produce a hundredfold, or sixty, or even an unimaginable thirtyfold crop. [Matthew 13.9]