She felt cursed by God. Her husband loved her. But in her body, and in her soul, she felt cursed. Echoing in her heart were the ancient words spoken to our first mother: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children.”

The pain applies to the birth, to be sure. But there is sorrow here, too – sorrow in conceiving a child, or rather, the difficulty thereof. The woman in today’s Old Testament reading spends years in the sorrow of barrenness.

Why does this happen, these trials of infertility, secondary infertility, and miscarriage? …