A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.
Jesus spoke these words to his twelve closest followers — the disciples — on the night before he was crucified. He was trying to prepare them for the grief they were about to experience when he died, and the joy that would follow when he rose from the dead three days later. He uses the experience of childbirth as a metaphor: a laboring mother endures intense pain, but the moment her child arrives, the anguish is eclipsed by something far greater. Jesus isn't saying the pain wasn't real — he's saying that what comes after it reframes everything. For his disciples, what was coming on the other side was his resurrection and the world-changing hope it carried.
Lord, thank you that you don't look away from the anguish of waiting. In whatever labor I'm enduring right now, remind me that you are not absent from the pain — you are in it with me, and you already know what's coming. Give me enough trust to stay in the room. Amen.
Think about what Jesus is doing in this moment. He's sitting with his closest friends the night before he's going to die, and he's trying to explain the unexplainable — not with a theology lecture, but with an image everyone in the room understood. Every person there had witnessed a birth, had seen the exhaustion and the agony, and had also seen what happens in the seconds after the baby arrives. Something shifts. The anguish doesn't disappear logically — the body still remembers — but it gets swallowed by something so much larger than it. Jesus wasn't promising his disciples they wouldn't grieve. He was promising that grief doesn't get the final word. You've probably had a version of this. A waiting season that felt endless. A loss that seemed permanent. A prayer that felt like shouting into an empty room. The temptation is to judge the whole story by the chapter you're currently in. But Jesus is asking you to hold two things at once: the reality of the pain and the reality of what's coming. That's not toxic positivity — it's a different kind of courage. The willingness to stay in the labor room long enough to meet what's waiting on the other side.
Why do you think Jesus chose the image of childbirth specifically to describe what his disciples were about to experience — what does that metaphor capture that other comparisons might miss?
Think of a time when pain or loss in your own life was eventually overshadowed by something good that came from it. How long did it take before you could see it that way?
Is it honest to say suffering is worth it because of what comes after — or does that risk minimizing real pain? How do you hold both the anguish and the hope without letting one cancel out the other?
How does the way you talk to people in the middle of their grief change if you genuinely believe this verse — that their sorrow is real but not final?
What is one situation in your life right now where you need to resist judging the whole story by the chapter you're in — and what would it look like to wait faithfully this week?
Because thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away:
Job 11:16
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Genesis 3:16
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
Romans 8:22
I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.
Hosea 13:14
And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
Revelation 12:2
He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the LORD.
Psalms 113:9
For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child ; and they shall not escape.
1 Thessalonians 5:3
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
Ecclesiastes 3:2
A woman, when she is in labor, has pain because her time [to give birth] has come; but when she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of her joy that a child has come into the world.
AMP
When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.
ESV
'Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world.
NASB
A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.
NIV
A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.
NKJV
It will be like a woman suffering the pains of labor. When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy because she has brought a new baby into the world.
NLT
"When a woman gives birth, she has a hard time, there's no getting around it. But when the baby is born, there is joy in the birth. This new life in the world wipes out memory of the pain.
MSG