12-19-22 - Waiting On the Baby

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. 

Advent IV is past and gone – onward to Christmas! I have commenced the baking and the decorating and the sermon-writing. Soon and very soon…

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born…

It gets real for me when I set up the crèche. Each year, I place the figures the same way in the stable, the angels at the same angles on the gold lame cloth that represents the glory of the Lord (that “shone round about them…”). The wise men are still far off on the top shelf of the bookcase, the shepherds abiding in the fields. Mary’s wicker trunk (part of a long-ago gift basket) sits behind her; the stable cat is at the base of the hayloft – and the toy velociraptor some child once left at my house looks down on the scene from the loft (a reminder of ever-present danger perhaps? Or rebirth?).

And there they are, Joseph standing with a staff, Mary kneeling, gazing at an empty manger, waiting… waiting… waiting for the moment when it all changes, when new life brings an end to the old. Mary and Joseph would never be able to go back to what they’d known. No new parents can – and these two were going to face more change than most.

What are you waiting for in your life this week? Perhaps it’s related to Christmas, perhaps not. What new life are you praying for? And what are you hoping will never go away?

New life is always coming at us, sometimes taking up the space of something we rather liked, or had grown comfortable with. Is there something yearning to take up space in your life, space you’re willing to create by letting something else go?

On Christmas Eve, when I get home from church, I will fetch the baby out of that little wicker trunk and place him in the manger. Jesus always shows up, eventually. Sometimes we just have to let him out of our baggage…

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