Expecting a Baby
This Advent and Christmas season has revealed its waiting nature in a whole new way for Jessica and me. We’re not only remembering and celebrating the birth of a baby boy in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago who inaugurated the Kingdom of God. We’re also not just anticipating the time when Jesus will return to reconcile all things to Himself.
In this time of expectancy, we’re also expecting our first baby!
I can’t even put into words what this change has done for us. We’ve always felt called to raise children, biological or otherwise, but the timing of work and school hasn’t allowed for it. However, with a recent change in plans, we felt like the time was right for us to start expanding our family. I’m both excited and nervous about becoming a father, and I already feel a deep love for our child who has yet to see the light of day.
It seems ridiculous for us to draw a connection between Jessica’s pregnancy and Mary’s, but the situation we’re in has allowed us to see another aspect of Jesus’ story that hasn’t always been evident to us. I’ll allow Jessica to begin.
Through Jessica’s Eyes
In this season of Advent, there’s much to learn about waiting patiently. As a soon-to-be mother, the weeks leading up to Christmas have taken on a particularly special meaning as Moses and I wait to meet our first child. It’s an experience unlike any other and has already filled my heart with so much love and joy as the anticipation builds.
However, there are certainly days when it doesn’t feel real at all. Even in the midst of nausea, fatigue, muscle aches, and frequent trips to the bathroom (all very real evidence of pregnancy), it’s difficult to equate all of this to the development of a tiny human inside me. The experience is surreal and I continue to live life fairly routinely, not always realizing the magnitude of what is happening. But then we hear our baby’s heartbeat for the first time and it brings tears of joy. Or I feel a tiny flutter and wonder if that’s our child moving around, making him or herself known. In these moments, the emotions are hard to describe and there’s already such a connection to this tiny unseen baby.
We often use language of “expectancy” in regards to pregnancy. “We’re expecting our first child!” we announce to our friends and family. “Is she expecting?” someone may whisper to a friend to avoid asking the forbidden question. If I ask myself what I’m really “expecting,” I’m not entirely sure. I’m expecting to become a mother and to raise a child alongside Moses. I’m expecting that there will be times of joy and times of great challenge. But do I really know what to expect? I don’t think so, since each of our experiences are vastly different. We can plan and prepare in the weeks to come, but we must trust that God is in control and that we will somehow make sense of things as we go. Waiting for this significant moment is both exciting and terrifying.
As we reflect on the birth of God’s Son into the world, and expect the coming of Jesus our Saviour, there’s also much that remains unknown. God works in mysterious ways and we often miss the signs, caught up in our own routine lives. What can we do to prepare for His coming? Will we know it is Him when He reveals Himself? In what ways do we see God at work in this season of anticipation?
Though Moses’s Eyes
Jessica and I are waiting for our baby to grow and for the time to be right for her body to initiate the birth. In one sense, we’re already parents. There’s a living being inside of her and we’re charged with doing our part to help the baby grow strong. But in another sense, we’re still waiting for the fulfilment of what is to come. In a very real way, we’re living in the “already, but not yet.”
The Bible is full of characters who were living with this kind of anticipation. God called them or made promises, and although they trusted and believed, they had to wait for God’s timing when it would come about. Israel, as the people of God, received signs and glimpses of what was to come. They were constantly called back into covenant with God and reminded of God’s faithfulness in the past as a sign that God would fulfill His plan in the future.
But Noah, Sarah and Abraham, Moses, David, Ruth and Boaz (to name a few examples) only saw glimpses of God’s kingdom while waiting for it to come in full. But that didn’t mean that God wasn’t present in their time. All of Israel (and the world for that matter) experienced the power and majesty of God’s grace, judgement, and deliverance before Jesus came. In micro and macro ways, they all experienced living into the “already, but not yet."
Mary and Joseph’s “already” was a much more complicated version of what Jessica and I are experiencing. The news of Mary's baby came through God’s messenger, and Elizabeth’s pregnancy in her old age was supposed to serve as a sign that nothing is impossible with God. But that wouldn’t have stopped the questions all around them from friends and neighbours who were looking for the “real story.” I imagine the fear and shame associated with people questioning the legitimacy of this pregnancy.
Wrapped within all this was the promise that this child would be God’s Messiah and would redeem the world. This was Mary and Joseph’s “not yet” and it wouldn’t be confirmed to them until the time was right. The glimpse we see of Jesus in the temple when He was twelve gives us a hint that Mary and Joseph were still waiting to see if God’s promise of Jesus was actually true. In the end, as Mary weeps at the foot of the cross, watching the promise of her womb give up His life, I wonder if at that point she understood that God’s Word was being fulfilled in Him.
Like I said, our expectancy is no comparison to Mary and Joseph because within her womb, Mary carried the “already, but not yet” for the whole world. In many ways, even though Jesus came, Christians still wait with the same kind of posture for God to return to make things right once and for all. Jessica’s pregnancy has made me more aware of this reality once again and has encouraged me to wait with hope, perseverance, and delight - for our own baby and, in this Christmas season, the return of Emmanuel, God with us.