 Dear Friends, We are nearing the end of the season called Advent during which we have been waiting with active expectation for the birth of Christ. This Sunday, churches around the world will proclaim the story of the Visitation when Mary, full of the good news brought to her by Gabriel and in the first stages of being filled with the Child of God, goes to be with her kinswoman Elizabeth. And Elizabeth, 6 months pregnant herself with the one who will become famous as John the Baptizer, knows instantly that something is different. Before Joseph knows, before anyone else is aware of the import of Mary's status, Elizabeth recognizes and calls her 'blessed'. Gabriel, when he had come calling just verses before this story had called her 'favored one' and now she's named 'blessed'. It's a bit much for a teenager, and from the wrong side of the tracks. With remarkable aplomb and a sense of deep humility - humility is, after all, truth - Mary accepts her vocation and in perhaps the most famous psalm in the Bible, she utters her faith in the God of her forebears as well as her hope for the one even then quickening within her. It is a speech steeped in the traditions of her people; it is an iconoclastic speech, courageous as it challenges the powers that be in her day. Mary gets it. It is no small thing to be favored, to be blessed.Going into the last few days before Christmas, in the midst of everything that is the season: shopping, working, worrying about money, thinking about family, I wonder what it would be like for each of us to experience, to know, that God favors us and blesses us, that God, of all things, has faith in us. I wonder how many people need to hear these words, now, not later and not after Christmas. Can we imagine for one minute that God still works in the world in this way? Look in the mirror and see a person who is favored by God and through whom God plans to do marvelous things. Perhaps not conceive and bear the Son of God, but so what? That one's been done already anyway! But think how many other wonderful things there are that God wants to accomplish through each of us - so many that you and I could not begin to imagine or count them all. And yet here we are. God's favoured, blessed ones trying to make a difference in the lives around us and all over the world. May our last few days of Advent and start of the Christmas season bring us many more opportunities to be the womb carriers and birth makers of the Word of God made flesh in God's son Jesus. Happy Advent and Merry Christmas! -Shawn Schreiner |
