“The Gospel Comes to Visit” – this is a story about how a woman’s period shares the Gospel with her each month. At Advance 2017, Jen Wilkin briefly alluded to how a woman’s period shares the Gospel. I do not talk about my period hardly ever – even with women. But I have written the Gospel story of it a few times. Once as a poem that I think I discarded. I was ashamed to share because talking about a woman’s monthly bleeding makes men and women uncomfortable. Yet, maybe, just maybe sharing how I see Jesus in my time of the month could help someone find salvation and hope in Him.
The Gospel Comes to Visit: how a woman’s period shares the Gospel
From the time a girl becomes a woman until she is too old to bear children, the Gospel comes to visit her each month.
She bleeds crimson and stains clothing easily. Remembering her sin is as scarlet and filthy rags is easy because the filthy rags are hers. She knows all too well the struggle to cover her sin so that no one knows when the Gospel visits. When the Gospel visits (not just your period), you are always confronted with sin.
Despite attempts at cleanliness, she changes her clothes and her sheets because of the stain of her blood. She does it quietly with little thought or interaction with others about it. Sin is messy; she knows this full well and sees the futility of it. Sometimes she washes and cleanses and still the stain stays. Only something new without stain can truly mask the problem of the blemish.
But the Gospel comes to visit.
She cannot cast it out or stop it. She must be hospitable to the bleeding and in a sense to its message, consider it and care for it. This blood and the shedding of it is a type of death. Conception did not occur this month. New life did not come. The uterus lining made itself ready for life and was lifeless. This is true whether or not she’s married or sexually active. The whole purpose of her cycle
Not only does she contend with her sin every single month, sometimes for seven days, she also listens to the story of hope. Her body tells her the story of how new life comes, and it prepares a place for hope to grow. Without the shedding of her blood, no baby has room to grow. Her body is so hopeful, it does this every month, sharing the Gospel with her over 450 times in her lifetime. It is as if Someone, her Creator, designed it this way on purpose.
A woman’s body prods her toward the hope of Christ. Sin. Bloodshed. Death. Resurrection. Repeat. In as much as her body reminds her of the hopelessness of sin, still, a new uterus lining rebuilds over the course of the rest of the month. Resurrection comes. Life remains even when the uterus is empty (just like the tomb).
The uterus lining, called the endometrium, which sheds each month upon lack of pregnancy is the same part of the body that grows into a placenta to feed and nourish a baby when pregnant. It’s a wonder to think about – the same part that dies is the same part that can grow to nourish. It’s its own form of the Gospel reminding us of the nourishment we have only through Christ as our bread and blood, as our Savior and all.
Without death, no new life.
No new life without feeding and nourishment and care.
A cycle that comes, again and again, not just through our periods, through generations, to tell a woman His story. His love story for her and all generations – that her children may become His children and sons and daughters of God. This Gospel is not simply for her but for the hope of her future – for her husband and her children and all to tell the story of Jesus.
I do not think Paul intended this when he wrote that women would be saved through childbearing, but, perhaps, in some small way, this is what is meant by “a woman will be saved through childbearing.” Gospel. Jesus. Hope. Sin, bloodshed, death, resurrection, life, repeat. (of course – we could do without the sin part and one day in Christ, we will.)
We are only one generation away from a world that does not know Christ. Share His story.
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