Beloved Epiphany friends–

Almost there, right? Ten more days until Christmas Day. 
Can you picture in your mind what that morning will be like? For those with children at home, it will be an early morning, with the little ones running to see what Santa has brought. For those of us who can only vaguely remember those days, it might be a leisurely brunch after church, listening to favorite Christmas music, calling relatives.

After any initial bustle, it is often a quieter day, after weeks of preparation and organization and logistics and prayer that the special gift you ordered would arrive despite supply chain hiccups.

But in the coming Sunday’s Gospel, we’re still in hustle-and-bustle land, with a twist. 

Mary is pregnant. For some reason – we are never told just what it is – she heads out to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is almost due to give birth. This Elizabeth, who had been barren for many years, is having a baby. Why does Mary go? Is she sick of getting sidelong glances from those who look askance at her pregnancy? Does she need reassurance that the God of miracles will care for her, as that same God has blessed Elizabeth? Or does she just want the comfort of being with someone who is a little further along in the process of pregnancy, someone who is older and calmer about it all?

We don’t know. We can only imagine.

What a gift imagination is! We can paint a picture of the whys and wherefores, multiple pictures, in fact, when the words don’t fill in all the gaps. 

We are people who like the whole story, the whole explanation, so having the ability to fill in those gaps is a comfort to us, regardless of how far away from reality our imaginings might be.
Some of you know that I was adopted as a baby. I had no contact with my birth parents – in those days, all adoptions were “closed,” meaning once I was adopted, my pre-adoption life was a blank. And I was fine with that, although I did have a little bit of information about my origins. I was blessed with adoptive parents who raised me with love and care. But a few years back, on a whim, I did one of those DNA tests to determine ethnicity. 
And now, it seems, I have found a first cousin on my birth mother’s side and a half-brother on my father’s side. I have seen pictures of my birth mother, who looks remarkably like me. I have seen a picture of the person we believe to be my birth father, including his registration card as a Jewish tailor from Poland in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

I couldn’t have imagined.

And yet, because I am a human being with imagination, I know that over the years I have imagined my birth parents’ stories. I will never know the whole of it: both of them are long dead. But imagination fills the gaps of the stories we don’t have words for, just like the two women in the Gospel. Mary imagines, as difficult as it is, what life will be like when this child is born. Elizabeth imagines, as miraculous as this pregnancy has been, what life will be like for her as well. And then the baby in her womb asserts, in a very John-the-Baptist bossy way, that Mary’s baby is to be the Messiah. And Mary responds with a hymn of joy and affirmation about Jesus and all that he will mean to the world he is about to enter. 

It’s perhaps one part mystery, one part miracle, and one part imagination. Filling in the gaps where we don’t have the words. Listen, dear ones, for the imaginings that make your heart leap with joy. Listen for the imaginings of how much Jesus loves you. Listen for all the possibilities that that love offers you.

Be blessed and be a blessing,

Mary+