The Word for Writers

The Gestation of Purpose

by Terry Barlow
08/06/14
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    It has been wisely said that all of God’s purposes require a gestation period.  A more literal translation of the Lord's Prayer would read something like, "Your will come into being or Your will be born."  Jesus came in the fullness of time it tells us in Galatians 4 v.4, and the word "fullness" carries the connotation of a pregnancy.   It would follow then that bigger purposes require bigger or longer gestation periods. Elephants, for example, are pregnant about 22 months, some whales 24 months or 2 full years! Imagine (we probably can’t as males) being pregnant for 2 whole years! These mammals feel a “quickening” as a human mother would when the movements of the unborn are first recognized. So too we might sense stirrings of purpose inwardly long before those purposes are evident in the visible world. ( Some of God's supernatural purposes can gestate much longer than two years, of course, when we consider examples like Abraham and Moses.)  Nevertheless they are real stirrings that are treasured milestones and can even be felt by others close to us if they are rightly positioned. And when finally the young are born, of course they are nurtured and go on developing and taking shape, as do the purposes of God until they reach the ultimate form of their maturity and full fruitfulness in the outside world.

  Our "Ishmaels" come about when we try to hurry along these purposes as Abraham did and as we all do in some way or other and at some time or other.  ( None of us has arrived after all, but, remember,  God never left!)  Ishmael whom the Bible tells us was "a wild donkey of a man, whose hand was against everybody,,,,"  A herd of wild donkeys I'm told,  when attacked by a predator,  will circle up with hind legs inward kicking and hurting each other.  Wild horses, on the other hand, will circle and kick outward TOWARD the predator.