Making Room in Advent by Bette Dickinson

Author:Bette Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: advent;christmas;art;original artwork;liturgy;devotional;visio divina;epiphany;paintings;nativity;reflections;Christian artist;art history;spiritual growth;meaning of Christmas;Christmas devotional;advent reflections
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2022-06-03T09:25:54+00:00

God comes into the world to lift the humble and feed the hungry.

We make room for him by joining him in this work.

PONDER

Who are the humble and hungry God might want to lift and fill in your community? How can you join him in this work?

PRAY

Inhale: Your kingdom come.

Exhale: Your will be done.

NOTICE

What does the Lord want you to see about these two women?

READ

Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home. —LUKE 1:56

Luke strongly centers the birth narrative around women—a provocative move in a patriarchal society that typically centers the story around men. In Luke’s Gospel, Mary and Elizabeth are elevated as two women who are obedient to God and have voices that rise above the fray. God chooses to use them in specific ways through their identity as women and as mothers. And as he does, he communicates something about himself—if we are willing to listen.

God prepares the world to receive him through the obedience, voices, and bodies of Elizabeth and Mary. Where would we be without their sacrificial love to bear such powerful miracles into the world? Not only are Mary and Elizabeth pregnant with miraculous children, but as Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil said at an InterVarsity Staff Conference, they are “pregnant with purpose.” Their lives demonstrate who God is and why he has come.

They raise their voices in wonder, worship, obedience, prophetic declarations, and even the wails of labor to bring life into the world. Their role in this story is fantastic and revolutionary. And God speaks through them the truths that we still need today.

Like Mary and Elizabeth, every woman who has nurtured something sacred in the world is a mother in her own way—whether she is physically a mother or not. All women have the power to be a mother to someone. They have the capacity to bring new life through their prayers, tears, tenacity, and gifts. And Mary and Elizabeth show us examples of ways women are needed in the kingdom of God.

Mary and Elizabeth create wombs in the world for the thriving of all people. They nurture space for their children to grow, sheltered in their empathy, compassion, and wonder. I see women do this all the time; they behold us and allow us to grow and flourish within their love. Women frequently allow those under their care to be an unfinished work of art. They offer the raw materials for us to become our most authentic selves. They hold space for us to unfurl with all our mess and allow us to simply be.

Mary and Elizabeth show us an embodied faith, one deeply connected to our humanity. As Jesus and John grow within their bodies, they show us how connected their physical bodies are to their spiritual lives. Just think of the way John’s leap in Elizabeth’s womb was a sign of the Holy Spirit inside her! Women teach us that we are not disembodied souls but flesh and blood imbued with divine presence. They frequently remind us how to receive God into the world as physical beings who hunger, grow tired, and are limited.

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