Infertility and the Church

Prayer groups, lists, meetings...All filled with requests of people suffering physically from illness, cancer, or other physical limitations. 

                    So why not infertility? 

We pray for loved ones to be healed of illnesses when Drs have given them a life limiting prognosis, knowing full well that the Great Physican and all Powerful Healer can perform this work despite what man and science have to say. So why not pray for the couple given the diagnosis of infertility? The ones broken by this 'physical limitation'? God has just as much power to give a childless couple children as He does to cure cancer. After all did He not prove it over and over in the Bible? Elizabeth, Hannah, Sarah. 

We fill our prayer lists with life or death situations...Why not this one? 

             After all it is a situation of LIFE.

Maybe it's because no one really knows the couple deals with this issue. In a sea of "be fruitful and multiplies" they feel ashamed. Perhaps believing that God is punishing them for some sin. (I don't personally believe this, I believe that Jesus took the final punishment for our sins on the cross and everything is under the blood, though sometimes The Lord allows us to endure the consequences of our actions. However I know that some folks from the college I attended believe the doctrine of "it may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but watch out because 'God's gonna git ya for what you did'.)

Or maybe it is the uttermost importance placed on having children by the church and those around them in the church. Program after program dedicated to children. Children's church, Awana, Sunday School programs, MOPS groups. Or the service that every woman that struggles with infertility dreads...Mothers Day. When the majority of churches only celebrate mothers with living children. Not those with a mother's heart who wishes to conceive or are childless due to loss. 

After all "children are a blessing from The Lord". All the while one woman sits in the pew week after week praying "Lord where's my blessing?"

So this week as you attend your mid-week prayer meetings or pray through your "list" in your quiet time, please remember everyone with physical needs even if they remain unspoken.