In this post I had a quote from Martin Luther that was in Passionate Housewives Desperate for God, but I couldn't find a reference. My dad tried looking for the reference a little bit without any luck. As I was trying to find that reference (I still haven't found it), I discovered some quotes in Luther: The Estate of Marriage sermon of 1522. I just had to share these!
"A wife too should regard her duties in the same light, as she suckles the child, rocks and bathes it, and cares for it in other ways: and as she busies herself with other duties and renders help and obedience to her husband. These are truly golden and noble works."
This quote was also in PHDfG. It is a wonderful quote for me. This is exactly what I do all day long!
"This is also how to comfort and encourage a woman in the pangs of childbirth, not by repeating St. Margaret legends and other silly old wives' tales but by speaking thus, "Dear Grete, remember that you are a woman, and that this work of God in you is pleasing to him. Trust joyfully in his will, and let him have his way with you. Work with all your might to bring forth the child. Should it mean your death, then depart happily, for you will die in a noble deed and in subservience to God. If you were not a woman you should now wish to be one for the sake of this very work alone, that you might thus gloriously suffer and even die in the performance of God's work and will. For here you have the word of God, who so created you and implanted within you this extremity." Tell me, is not this indeed (as Solomon says [Prov. 18:22]) "to obtain favour from the Lord," even in the midst of such extremity?"
Um, no, this is NOT what I want to be told when I am in the midst of childbirth. When I read this quote to Ram and told him this is not what I wanted to hear, he said, "Don't worry, I would call you Ewe, not Grete." Grr!
Ram has taken a book by the apostolic fathers with him for my last two births (he hadn't bought the book yet when I had Lamb 1). He was happy to get a lot of reading done while I was in labor! He also suggested that next time I'm labor that he should bring this sermon from Luther and read it to me while I'm in labor. Grr!
But seriously, this is a great quote to read before or after childbirth, just not when you are in the midst of it!
I have two more quotes from this sermon that I plan to share in a later post.
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