Until you are born again of the Spirit.
The thing about a womb is that it doesn’t seem like anything abnormal. Certainly not anywhere you’d choose to leave—if you could even understand that leaving was a possibility.
Imagine for a moment that you’re a fetus: The womb is your total reality. It’s nearly impossible to conceive of what it’s like “outside,” or that there even is an “outside,” let alone that this supposed “outside” is where you are meant to be.
Sometimes there are pokes and prods you feel coming from somewhere, but as soon as you turn around, they’re gone. Sometimes you think you hear something else—a voice maybe, whatever that is—above the rush of blood and breathing that constantly surrounds you, but you can’t quite make it out, no matter how closely you try to listen.
Then one day everything goes topsy-turvy. There is squeezing and a rush of hormones through your veins. Your heart starts to beat faster. A blinding light, cold air against your body, oxygen rushing into your lungs, your limbs uncurling and stretching, a mob of cries and laughter, and the embrace of arms holding you close to a chest that you have never met but that you are certain you have always known.
This, the Christian faith tries to confess, is what it is like when the Spirit of Christ comes to us. This is what it is like to enter the kingdom of God—God’s reality. It’s like leaving the womb of the world so that we can live in God’s complete creation more fully and freely.
