Advent Week 3

Hope For Those Who Are Watching

Saturday, December 21

"When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son.  Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy and they shared her joy." (Luke 1.57-8)

Relatives and Neighbors

The first chapters of Luke are like the beginning of a good novel. It introduces the main characters of the drama and gives us a sense of the time, place, and setting of the action. Like a window shade pulled back so we can look in a room, we read little facts and colors of life that show us the people in whose lives the gospel takes shape. Elizabeth, an older relative of Mary, is unexpectedly pregnant.  I can just imagine the chuckles of her friends and neighbors as they wait for the baby.  In the light-hearted love of good people it was the celebration of God's mercy they were enjoying.   It says her neighbors and relatives heard about her great joy, and I have been in that place -- driving a little out of the way to look at the neighbor's house to see if the lights are on or the garage open, watching for clues that the event we are hoping for has come.

And this is the world in which John the Baptist and later Jesus was born -- a world of relatives, neighbors, friends, people like you and me, watching to see if the moment of God's mercy had come to rest on Elizabeth, on Mary, on the world.  A candle suddenly sputters to life in the dead of night illuminating the faces of women around a bed. The light is seen by those in the room and others, perhaps those neighbors close by, awake and restless in the night, peering through the darkness, looking at the house, hoping.  

Roger Ward