What a strange pregnancy Elizabeth must have had. To be pregnant in the first place, her body long past the blush of youth, years after such a thing seemed possible... Imagine what changes in body and spirit she was experiencing. And on top of that, the silence. Her Zechariah, usually so articulate and voluble, rendered mute for the term of her confinement.
How much had he been able to tell her, in signs and letters, about what transpired in that sanctuary with the terrifying angel? How he had been rendered mute until the child’s birth for daring to ask the question Mary also asked, “How?”
Zechariah said to the angel, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” The angel replied, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.”
Was he able to tell her what the angel had said about their son-to-be, about the ascetic regimens laid down prior even to his conception. Was he able to describe the mission their John was to have: “He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
The spirit and power of Elijah?! Who was this child to be?
To make ready a people prepared for their Lord? How was he to do that?
Perhaps Elizabeth knew nothing of these things, only that her husband had come home from his temple service unable to speak, and somehow more affectionate than she’d known him in some time. In the deep and familiar silence of long years together, they lay down and conceived a child, their lovemaking at last producing fruit beyond mere connection. And for five months she stayed home, relishing the silence and the joy, making room for the new life growing within her, saying, “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.”
Bringing new life to the point of birth is always holy work, if we can call allowing things to happen inside us “work.” So much of what we call spiritual work or spiritual discipline is meant to be leaning back more than forward, letting go, allowing the Holy Spirit to work with our spirit at a level deeper than we can affect with our conscious mind – unless we want to thwart it. We can always choose to disengage from growth, sinking into our familiar patterns, though a sad choice it is, to hold back new life.
Can you feel anything stirring in you, stretching you, changing your inner landscape, even kicking a little, saying, “Let me grow until I’m big and strong enough to be born – and then what a gift I will be to you, and to the world!” Can you begin to name it and make space and time for that growth? Perhaps adding some retreat time in this season – or after it?
Some silence in our "gestation" can allow us to become more in tune with what is being done within us, beyond our reach. If the new life comes from God, it is holy – and will be a gift to us, and to the world.
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