"always pain before the child is born"...help me out on meaning please!

I always took it as life is meaningless and directionless until you have a child and then their life becomes your life. Without a child life is painful and confusing but having a child takes all that indulgent BS away.

Yahweh means God in the ancient Jewish tradition, before Jesus Christ was born.  Maybe it means that, for Christians at least, that there always was pain before the "child" (Jesus) was born.  After all, Christians were persecuted in many regions around this time, maybe that was the pain. 

The pain could also be like Bads316 said, directionless until the "child" Jesus was born

I always took it as our life here on earth will not be easy. There will be struggles and pain, but if we keep our faith, the joy of everlasting life will be our reward (like the joy of the birth of the child after the pain of labor). Just my thought.

[a]

Or it could just be a general line about child birth. The lyric is actually "Always pain before a child is born" and childbirth is painful for the mother. That's always how I saw it, anyway. Like, there's always pain before something as good and pure as a child being born.

i thought its always pray..

I assumed it related to Eve and women suffering the pain of child birth after the fall from grace-- that we are human and subject to His will, which is the theme of the song.

[a]

Or it could just be a general line about child birth. The lyric is actually "Always pain before a child is born" and childbirth is painful for the mother. That's always how I saw it, anyway. Like, there's always pain before something as good and pure as a child being born.

This is exactly what i was going to say!

I think iut's a metaphor for the emergence of anything new and potentially good in your life.  Sometimes we don't get that without some pain beforehand, like in the birth of a child.

John 3:1-21
(I think it's about the spirit/ the struggle, facing the hard truths, trying everything else but what really matters....that's the pain.) 

Born from Above
 1-2 There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jews. Late one night he visited Jesus and said, "Rabbi, we all know you're a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren't in on it."
 3Jesus said, "You're absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it's not possible to see what I'm pointing to—to God's kingdom."

 4"How can anyone," said Nicodemus, "be born who has already been born and grown up? You can't re-enter your mother's womb and be born again. What are you saying with this 'born-from-above' talk?"

 5-6Jesus said, "You're not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the 'wind-hovering-over-the-water' creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it's not possible to enter God's kingdom. When you look at a baby, it's just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.

 7-8"So don't be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be 'born from above'—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God."

 9Nicodemus asked, "What do you mean by this? How does this happen?"

 10-12Jesus said, "You're a respected teacher of Israel and you don't know these basics? Listen carefully. I'm speaking sober truth to you. I speak only of what I know by experience; I give witness only to what I have seen with my own eyes. There is nothing secondhand here, no hearsay. Yet instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate with questions. If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don't believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can't see, the things of God?

 13-15"No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.

 16-18"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

 19-21"This is the crisis we're in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won't come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is."

"always pain before the child is born"


anything joyful (like a child being born) comes with suffering and sacrifice.  it's such a simple line, but so loaded with meaning.  with each triumph we achieve in life, so too must we undergo a great pain.

I think iut's a metaphor for the emergence of anything new and potentially good in your life.  Sometimes we don't get that without some pain beforehand, like in the birth of a child.

my thoughts exactly - just like the phrase, "It's always darkest right before the dawn"

It means like when Jesus was born, our sins were forgiven, the pain is gone like after a baby you
go threw the pain and look at the outcome.

Those are some appropriate and interesting connections, but the most direct Bible reference of this line is to John ch 16:21-22, which compares the pain a woman feels before a birth to other kinds of pain we feel as we wait for the fulfillment of God's plan for the world (like "Still I'm waiting for the dawn..."):

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.

I think you're on to it, CharityDance.