Following is a devotion for Advent that I wrote for the church I attend.
Luke 1: 39-45
Mary Visits Elizabeth
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. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”
I am writing this about 90 minutes before a lockdown will be put on the state. Rumors swirl that students at the “U” will be told to head home at Thanksgiving and unless absolutely necessary, not to come back until next September. I am sure there is no toilet paper left anywhere, and I’m wondering what this means for my friends and I, who’ve recently taken to bundling up and sitting around a fire outside, sometimes talking until midnight.
I’m baking chocolate chip cookies, too. This time, I decided to throw in a handful of roasted walnuts into the batter. I read somewhere that walnuts offer some sort of nutrient to the brain that helps us feel content. “Magic beans,” I whispered as I folded them gently in with the chocolate chips.
I’ve been meaning to make chocolate chip cookies since the school year started. My dream was to have them stacked on plates with mugs of tea and apple slices for the girls when they came downstairs for a study break.
I got the idea from my days in graduate school. I’d travel to Whidbey Island for 10 days at a time to chase a writing dream. It was grueling and lonely and scary, but I was surrounded by the Puget Sound and Mt. Olympus and I got to sail along the Whale Trail on my way to Port Townsend and the building where we’d get our meals always had coffee and chocolate chip cookies for us. At any time of day, we could pour ourselves a mug and pick up a cookie. Sometimes I would take the snack back to my house on a hill and write. Sometimes I would sit for a moment and eat with the other writers, the wind off the sound creaking the windows as we chewed and sipped.
I am studying Tolkien’s The Hobbit for my next book. I’m trying to figure out if the story has anything to offer a woman in her mid-forties. I have more doubt about this manuscript than faith, but I’m beginning to think that the two are difficult to distinguish – like ingredients that are mixed together and that complement each other, and that make something delicious to help us carry on with our days.
I’m at the point in the story where Bilbo and Company get to the Lake Town, “not a town of elves but of Men, who still dared to dwell here under the shadow of the distant dragon – mountain.”
Perhaps we humans have no magic, but maybe it’s our willingness to dare to dwell under the shadows that is our call, especially these days. Like Mary who hurries to Elizabeth once Gabriel leaves her, or like Elizabeth who eagerly embraces her friend upon hearing her voice, or like the son in Elizabeth’s womb who leaps – maybe because Jesus is in the womb next to him, maybe because he hears his mother’s voice, maybe because he feels his mother’s joy and there is nothing left to do but leap.
It is Monday morning now. The order has been placed. At breakfast, we wondered what that means for Thanksgiving and Christmas. “I’m not sure what it means,” I told Hadley and Harper as I placed dirty dishes in the sink, their clanging on the enamel startling us all.
Later, I will leave two plates – each with a chocolate chip cookie and slices of pear – outside their bedroom doors.
It’s not exactly the dream I had, but it’s the one I’m daring to dwell in.
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