Dear friends,

As we approach the end of the year and enter into December, I often find myself thinking about Mary. I imagine what she must have been feeling as she drew closer to giving birth. We often marvel at Mary for her obedience to God. Sometimes when we think about the word obedience we think about passivity. But Mary’s obedience to God was far from passive. Her decision to speak those words - ‘Behold I am the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word’ (Luke 1:38) - those words took grit, they took courage, they took faith. I remember my pregnancies. I remember the feeling of awe and amazement and thankfulness at the precious gift I had been given with this new life growing within me. But also, I remember the debilitating sickness that was certainly not confined to the morning! I remember the joint pain. I remember the sense of being out of control with all the changes happening. Mary, surely, would have experienced similar things as she carried Jesus Christ to term. She had been given an incredible gift. And a mixed blessing. And she said yes.

During Advent, as we wait, as we prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus Christ into the world - yes, I think about Mary. I think about her acceptance of the greatest gift of all, and the mixed blessing of her life within the acceptance of that gift. The uncertainty she faced as a pregnant unmarried woman. The way she was forced to wait upon the will of her future husband to decide her fate. The fear of giving birth in a time where many died in childbirth. The realisation that she would have to take a long and arduous journey whilst heavily pregnant. Indeed, at this time of year, I think a lot about Mary. And I think about her yes.

Our lives in this broken world are full of mixed blessings. We are awestruck at the precious gift of waking up each new day, and yet we are exhausted; we sing our gratitude for the saving power of Jesus in our lives, and yet we still experience suffering; we put our hope and trust in our God of all love and we know the blessings He brings, and yet we feel fearful; we bring in God’s Kingdom day by day as we walk with Christ and carry out our small acts of radical and counter-cultural love, and yet the world waits for the full redemption of all things in the coming Kingdom. We are human. We live in the now and the not yet, we live in the mixed blessing.

Life is messy, complicated, contingent, finite, inter-related. Humanity and human life are a complex web of mixed blessing. And it is into this humanity that God steps. Our God is not a God who takes a broom and from a great height sweeps all the problems under the carpet. Our God is a God who picks up a cloth and kneels beside us as we wipe. Our God is a God who takes the dirty cloth from our hands, looks into our smudged and tear-stained face and tells us that He will wash it all clean. Our God is a God who enters into our humanity, experiences the mixed blessing of human life with us, suffers with us, dies for us and rises to new life to save and redeem us and all things. Our God does not sweep suffering under the carpet. Our God takes suffering up into God’s very self and turns our tears into laughter, our mourning into joy.

As we wait in the stillness of Advent, this is the gift we wait to unwrap at Christmas. Christ is the greatest gift we could ever receive. And Mary said yes.

As we approach the end of another turbulent year in the life of our nation and world, as we journey through December, and through our first Advent and Christmas season since Revd Caroline has left our Team, we may all be feeling the mixed blessing of life. We may be excited at the celebrations to come, or we may feel trepidation; we may be surrounded by family and friends, or we may be alone; we may be eager to buy gifts and write cards and take part in all the Christmas events and services which will be coming up, or we may feel overwhelmed and unequal to the task; we may be joyful or we may be grieving. We may feel all of these things, or none. But as we wait and prepare this December, however we might be feeling, let’s take time to pause, to find some quiet and stillness amidst it all - to remember Mary and to remember her yes and to remember all that her yes meant for her and for us. And in our life of mixed blessings, of fear and hope, of suffering and joy, of loneliness and connection - let us remember that what we wait for and prepare to celebrate this coming Christmas is the God who steps in and who says let me hold and enfold it all, let me make it new. And let us say yes.

I pray that this Advent, we will all be able to find those moments of stillness, and that we will all be able to experience the anticipation and excitement of preparing our hearts and lives to receive, once again, the greatest gift ever given, Jesus Christ.

With love in Christ,

Revd Holly