2024 Advent Devotion: Day 21

Saturday, December 21

Isaiah 66:7-11; Luke 13:31-35

I have to admit that it’s refreshing to come across feminine imagery for the Divine—especially in this season in which women’s lives, experiences, and voices are so central to the story. So often women’s stories and the feminine images of God we find in the Bible are ignored in favor of the stories about men and masculine images of God. When that happens our view of God and what it means to follow God becomes rigid, unimaginative, and incomplete. Today’s texts invite us to lean into exploring these images we often ignore.

In the passage from Isaiah 66, we have imagery of mother Zion giving birth to a people. You don’t have to squint too hard to see the implied imagery of God as midwife, as “the one who delivers.” Midwives provide coaching through the process of childbirth and help deliver life into the world. It makes sense that if a child was being born, a midwife would be there, and who could be a better midwife than God? In this text, God is helping deliver a people out of hardship and exile and into thriving and abundance, into a community where all have their fill of good things. We are called to be midwives too, helping to deliver justice and love into the world so that it becomes a place where everyone can thrive.

In the passage from Luke 13, Jesus talks about his desire to be like a mother hen who gathers her chicks under her wing. Jesus taps into the attentive and protective imagery of motherhood to describe part of his own work. Jesus was always paying attention to those on the margins and saw how those in power didn’t seem to care. He made those on the margins feel seen and heard, gave them love, gave them a place at the table, and challenged those with power to act justly so that no one would remain on the margins. We are also called to mother the people who have been pushed to the margins by showing them love and ruffling a few feathers to work for a world where no one finds themselves on the margins.

I wonder how you are being called to midwife and mother so that the world becomes a place of love and justice where all have the opportunity to live lives of abundance?

As we journey through these last few days before we remember the birth of Christ, may we hear God calling us all to act as midwives and mothers, delivering and nurturing love and justice so that the world becomes all God desires it to be.

Allison Benfield
Associate Pastor at Providence Church, Charleston, South Carolina