Taking shape
Katy Emslie-Smith
December 10, 2021
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Luke 1: 39-41 (NIVUK)
39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Please excuse an aside in obstetric imagination but I have always wondered if the baby John’s leaping for joy included a turning in the womb from breech, hips first, to cephalic, head first, presentation in preparation for safe delivery in an older woman.
Whatever the antenatal clinical details, this is an enchanting encounter between two expectant mothers, caught up in the flesh and blood, skin, bone and muscle of fundamental human experience, motherhood anticipating delivery of a child. It is also a picture of two women in an encounter infused with the deepest Spirit given joy. Both women greatly surprised by circumstance, one old, one young. The first is well on in years for pregnancy, at about twenty four weeks gestation, when she would be able to place her hands on the satisfying swell of her abdomen and express joy at the fulfilment of long, deep yearning in these gifted months.
The younger perhaps more ambivalent, initially greatly troubled at the news of a child, needing reassurance that there is no place for fear in this. Relocated away from home, perhaps to avoid public gaze, in the crisis of unexpected pregnancy outside social convention, she nevertheless finds a song of rejoicing forming within her. With the encouragement and wisdom of Elizabeth, she recognises in the rubble of her circumstance the gold seam of God’s promises and purposes.
The routes to joy can be so different. Sometimes it comes in the gift of purely happy times where we recognise God’s promise of life abundant taking shape in days of rich blessing. Sometimes it arises in the ambiguity of difficult times where pain is the crucible in which joy is refined and runs clear like gold. Where faith recognises the coming of God’s mercy and his mindfulness of us in Christ Jesus, whatever our circumstance, joy is the surprise visitor.
PRAYER:
Lord, whatever our lives hold, may we find that unfathomable joy that makes children and adults leap and sing, as spirit and soul we rejoice that you have great things for us. Amen
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