My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.—Luke 1:47

The Advent season can be frustrating during our worship services. We want to sing Christmas carols that celebrate Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem. We don’t want to delay the celebration.

But Advent is the season of pregnant hope and Mary’s wonderment. During this time when we wait, we can also imagine Mary asking the question, What child is this?

It helps to put ourselves in Mary’s place and imagine what the months of pregnancy might have been like for her.

After traveling to visit Elizabeth in the Judean hill country, she stayed with Elizabeth and Zechariah for three months. Luke records Elizabeth’s greeting as well as Zechariah’s prophecy after their son—later known as John the Baptist—was born.

Mary was still pregnant when she heard Zechariah say to his infant son, “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.”

Again, Mary perhaps asked, What child is this?

This Advent season, our family is living with a similar question. Our daughter is pregnant with our first grandchild, a boy. When I look at her or when we feel the baby kicking, I ask the same question: What child is this? What will he look like? What will he be like? What will he do with his life?

It is during this prenatal period that we dream and imagine the possibilities for the future. So, too, for Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah. In doing so, perhaps they remembered the words of the prophet Isaiah:

In the days to come …
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

These verses are part of a larger text designated for this year’s Advent season in the worship material provided in Leader. They call us to dream of a world not yet here. They call us to, once again, make this a season of pregnant hope.

During the Advent season, we get in touch with the possibilities of peace offered by an infant in a manger whose birth is announced by an angel to anonymous shepherds:

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!

Our culture overwhelms us with a Christ-less Christmas. The Advent season is the opportunity to extricate ourselves from the sacrilege. We can do so by following Mary’s lead at the Annunciation: by magnifying the Lord.

“The season’s texts,” says the Leader material, “lift up almost unbelievable visions of God’s joyful restoration of relationships among all God has made: humans and other creatures and the earth under our feet. We stop long enough to notice what’s going on, God’s generosity and creativity surprise us, and, catching the vision, we can’t help but respond.”

What child is this growing in Mary’s womb? He is God made flesh, Immanuel. He is the one who will change the world. Advent season is the opportunity to imagine what can be born in us and what God dreams for us all.