Barren

Advent 2025, Day 3

Luke 1:5-25, 39-56

         All her life, she has watched the mothers. Early in her marriage, in the blush and confidence of youth, she waited with eagerness her own turn. The swelling of her belly. The deciding of names, the making of baby clothes, the trading of stories, the laughter and camaraderie. The rejoicing with each new child, a mark of a woman’s significance. 

         Month after month, year after year, she waits, each year the sorrow growing heavier, the shame harder to bear. In her day, bearing children is everything. If you can’t have children, you are a reproach. Even if it isn’t your fault, you somehow feel blamed. Unworthy. You live with your husband’s disappointed hopes as well as your own. Worst of all must be the loneliness. 

         Now her friends are all likely grandmothers, maybe even great-grandmothers. And she, past the age of childbearing, lives with this permanence, this identity. 

         Barren.

         Maybe you know this word, in its literal sense or in the inferences it carries. Less than. Unable. Failure. Disappointment. 

         No matter what else you accomplish, no matter who you are, no matter what your circumstances, this failure seems to define you, at least in your own mind, and you suspect, in the minds of others.  

         Elizabeth, too, must feel hollowed out by this word like the emptiness of her womb and her home. And yet she remains faithful and righteous. Continues to walk with her God. I imagine her now in her old age, tucking away her sorrow and serving those around her, giving life with her hands, her words, her heart, even if she can’t give it with her body. I imagine the way her grief has shaped her, smoothed and softened her, creating a place for others to be seen. I imagine her time poured out, given away to those who need her most. 

         Well. You know what’s coming next. This God who has been silent for so long is suddenly on the move, and in typical style, is choosing all the unlikeliest ways to show up. He comes to Elizabeth in her barrenness. He answers her prayers that she lifted for so many years, even though she probably stopped asking long ago. 

         He waits so long that it is physically impossible for Elizabeth to conceive, not to mention that she is a tired, achy old woman. He waits so long that it can be nothing but a miracle. 

         Old woman that she is, Elizabeth does not run to her community of women with this news, as she might have in her youth. Now she is the one who waits. She secludes herself with her Lord and watches this miracle uncurl inside her. She lets him keep telling her the story he is writing. 

         Then one day her young cousin shows up, also pregnant by a miracle, and Elizabeth’s baby leaps for joy in her womb. And she, full of five months of quiet listening, knows. Her Lord has come. God gives these two women to each other, each of them likely terrified, asked to do something difficult, even impossible. Mary, just entering her days of reproach—an unwed mother!—begins her long journey with this old woman who understands what it is to be alone, labeled, and shamed by her community. What a gift to Mary to be with this cousin who has lived so long with sorrow and reproach, this old-new mother walking faithfully with her God. 

         Elizabeth likely never thought her barrenness would be a gift, to herself or to others. She never imagined that this is how God would come to her. Then again, God’s story for us is always bigger than we imagine. His purpose for our sorrows always with life. With him. 

         Elizabeth saw herself with reproach. But God never did. Probably he doesn’t see you the way you see yourself, either. And probably his story for you will not stop where you think it does. Most certainly his plans for you are not finished. He’s still coming. 

         Just wait. 

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