Pregnant Pause
December 23, 2020
Chris Damon
The newspapers tell us that there will be a rare alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, tomorrow December 21 on the winter solstice, to form a “Christmas Star.” It’s the two planets’ closest encounter (from our perspective) in nearly 400 years.
Another kind of rare alignment it seems to me is the remarkable alignment of this 2020 season of Advent with the promise of a coming vaccine and an end to our nine months of exile in place. Could anyone have written a script like this?
We are in a timeframe that might be called a “pregnant pause” - a phrase with a bit of double meaning given the circumstances of Mary and Joseph at the time we commemorate. Google tells us that “pregnant pause” can be defined as “a pause that gives the impression that it will be followed by something significant.” But I think this is more than just an impression of something significant coming.
In her first sermon with us on November 22, Beth Dickerson spoke of us being in a liminal space or time. I had to look up that word also. It has a lot of definitions but basically means we’re in an in-between place where we’ve left one world behind us and we will at some point enter another world -- but we don’t know exactly what that new place will look like.
Another writer has compared our situation to that of Holy Saturday -- in between the sadness and death of Good Friday and the joyful liberation of Easter Sunday. Sometimes I also wonder if we’re in some sort of purgatory, trying to avoid the worst while praying to be saved. There are many Christian and Biblical metaphorical parallels to the place we find ourselves in now.
But one of the key messages of Advent is Hope.
Let us Pray: Help us, God, to know we have reason for Hope in our current distress and may this period end with the promise of Your arriving among us soon, and of our ultimate Salvation. Amen
