bible and theology on Infertility

For Those Who Still Hope I am Sarah  Bitter and barren   Burnt out by this promise that never came Worn out from waiting  Laughing to hide the aching  Longing for these empty arms to hold a baby B...

Leader: Loving God, you know us through and through, having knit us together in our mothers’ wombs. People: We praise you for gathering us like a mother hen, for protecting us with the ferocity of a...

Mother’s Day is complicated for a pastor. Among the happy families that are celebrating, there are children who were abused by mothers, mothers who lost lost a child, and women suffering from inferti...

My wife and I once knew a single woman, Anna, who wanted desperately to have children. She eventually married, and contrary to the expectations of her doctors, was able to bear two healthy children de...

The years continue to pass and Sarah still does not conceive, but one day God speaks to Abraham and reassures him that, despite her great age, she will bear a son. And, sure enough, it happens. I once...

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “formed” s...

Overall, from a biblical perspective, the sustained fertility and habitability of the earth, or more particularly of the land of Israel, is the best index of the health of the covenant relationship. W...

Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that...

A lack of generosity refuses to acknowledge that your assets are not really yours, but God's.

Babies by nature are completely selfish. They think only of themselves and their own needs. They are incapable of giving; they can only receive. That is immature thinking. Unfortunately, many people n...

It seems almost oxymoronic to believe that this new idealism has led to a new pessimism about marriage, but that is exactly what has happened. In generations past there was far less talk about compati...

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt.

In this beautiful illustration from Tom Long’s well-known preaching guide, The Witness of Preaching , a pastor shares a true story of what valuing human life can look like when God’s Kingdom takes ro...

My son has seizures and intellectual disabilities. A couple of years into that journey, I organized a global prayer vigil for my son. I recruited friends and colleagues in North America, South America...

Years ago, a friend gave me this counsel: “Make a list of all the lives you would affect by your sexual immorality.” I did. Every so often I reread it. “Denalyn. My three daughters. My son-in-law. My ...

Faith makes all things possible. Love makes all things easy.

Though he works and worries, the farmer never reaches down to where the seed turns into summer. The earth grants.

The image of “adoption” tells us that our relationship with God is based completely on a legal act by the Father. You don’t “win” a father, and you don’t “negotiate” for a parent. Adoption is a legal ...

Francis Chan tells the story of Domingo and Irene Garcia: He’s a mechanic. She’s a hairdresser. They have been foster parents to thirty-two children and have adopted sixteen. Domingo and Irene are in...

Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twi...

A few years ago Christian friends of ours, after several years of marriage, came to see Esther and me to explain that their relationship had reached an impasse and that they could see no alternative b...

The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and...

God help the man who won’t marry until he finds a perfect woman, and God help him still more if he finds her.

The tension between autonomy and intimacy is most clearly evidenced in the trend toward cohabitation. Today, between 50 and 70 percent of American couples are cohabiting before or instead of marrying....

Adoption is a greater mercy than Adam had in paradise.

Some kind of loss is usually necessary to turn the mind toward faith. If you’re satisfied with want you’ve got, you’re hardly going to look for anything better.

Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumpt...

[With respect to rejecting the sacraments] Nothing is more odd than for the faithful freely to do without the assistance handed down by the Lord or allow themselves to be deprived.

I wish for you good health in each other’s arms.

Maleness and femaleness is the fundamental way we carry our relational design. Interestingly, the English word sexuality comes from the Latin word sexus, which means “being divided, cut off, separated...