Waiting (by Sara G. Barton)

Sara G. Barton is chaplain at Pepperdine University. [Image credit.]

We really cannot think about the gospel Christmas story without thinking about pregnancy.

When I was a little girl growing up in the South in the 1970’s, my mother taught me it was not polite to talk about pregnancy or to look at a woman’s pregnant stomach.  She insisted I should not even say the word pregnant.  She taught me, instead, to describe a pregnant woman by saying, “She’s expecting.”

Times have certainly changed since my mom tutored me in hushed tones about pregnancy etiquette. Nowadays, in our liberated society, we talk about pregnancy so openly that it’s hard to remember a time when we didn’t post pictures of growing bellies on Facebook, refer to pregnancy as preggers and prego, and share intimate details of pregnancy with anyone who will listen.

I lived in Uganda for a time, and when we were learning the local language, we were told that the word pregnant does not exist in that language. Experiencing the hushed tones reminiscent of my mother’s, I was taught to say of a pregnant woman: “Alinda,” which means, “She waits.”

She is waiting to know if it’s a boy or girl.

Waiting for that wonderful smell of a new baby.

Waiting to choose a name.

Waiting to meet the child she will love fiercely.

Waiting to nurture.

She waits.

Waiting so describes my experience of pregnancy: the anticipation, the expectations, the longing to hold a child I was, ironically, already holding.

In the Advent season, Christians join the anticipation of the story of Jesus, and it’s Luke who describes that anticipation so well in his Gospel.  When we think of a pregnant woman in Luke, we automatically think of Mary, and we certainly shouldn’t miss Mary!

But, if we skip to Mary too quickly, we miss another pregnant woman, Elizabeth.

And Luke doesn’t want us to miss Elizabeth!

If we pay attention to Luke, it’s like he points his pen at her and says to readers:  See Elizabeth waiting.

Elizabeth was a master of waiting.  Month after month, she had waited for the telltale sign that she would give birth, but every month, year after year, had held disappointment. As she was getting along in years, her biological clock was no longer a quiet and lazy tick tock but an accelerating, deafening alarm. Her waiting had become an anguished wait, a tortured ache, a grief-filled longing, slowly squashing all hope.  When we read Luke, however, we see the transformation of Elizabeth’s waiting as she’s given the opportunity to wait in a whole new way.

Luke wants readers to step inside that experience. Male or female, can you see yourself waiting in Elizabeth’s whole new way?

That’s the experience of advent!  During Advent, God’s people recognize that Jesus is bringing redemption, but we also know that we must wait for the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21).

Unfortunately, sometimes we wait all wrong.   In a broken world with pain, suffering, and conflict, we sometimes wait as if there is no hope.

So, we have an Advent tutor, once-barren and now pregnant, Elizabeth.  As we light the candles of Advent, we attempt to wait and celebrate like she did.

During, and even after the Advent season is over, may we internalize what we’ve learned about waiting.  May Elizabeth be able to say of our faith: blessed are you who believe that there will be fulfillment of what was spoken by the Lord.