Bringing new life to birth
Sam Wells has helpfully been encouraging us in his recent prayers to note synergies between the waiting which Advent entails and our current experiences in the pandemic. When I shared this in a recent HeartEdge gathering, one of those present suggested that our current experience may equate more closely to the experience of pregnancy. That experience is, of course, in the Advent frame of reference, especially on the fourth Sunday of Advent when the Gospel reading is the story of the Annunciation.
Some years ago Victoria Emily Jones, who writes on art and theology, prepared an Advent Art Devotional that focused on what it meant for Jesus to be born of woman by using a meditation that I had written. She writes that, in Advent, we await with aching intensity the fulfilled promise of a messiah alongside Mary, whose pregnancy made the expectation all the more palpable. She ponders the amazing truth of the Incarnation through Jesus coming as seed and foetus and birthed son; as well as how we are called to bear God into the world today.
One of the artworks she shares is by Janet McKenzie, who imagines a quiet moment of inner preparation that Mary might have shared with her two midwives on the night of Jesus’s coming. In Mary with the Midwives, Mary touches her belly and prays to God for calmness and strength—qualities she draws from the Spirit above and her helpers beside. She exhales, steadying herself for the adventure of motherhood. A shared womanhood, a shared faith, and a shared desire to welcome new life unite these three women in this most spectacular assignment: bringing God into the world.
How might we share in bringing God into the world anew at this time? What might it mean to view ourselves as midwives bringing new life into the world at this time?
Come, Lord Jesus, Come: Visual Devotions for Advent - https://victoriaemilyjones.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/advent-art-devotional.pdf.
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