To coincide with our annual conference, EQUIP Picks are 10 great reads, chosen and reviewed by the EQUIP Women Team for women.

Better late than never, right? For the last few years, I’ve enjoyed reading a Christmas devotional. This year, it was The Dawn of Redeeming Grace by Sinclair B. Ferguson. One of the things I most enjoy about this annual habit is the chance to slow down and dwell on the details of Jesus’ birth… and it’s never as old or familiar as I expect. About halfway through December, Ferguson pointed out a detail that I hadn’t properly considered before… and it’s possibly the saddest verse in the Christmas story…

An enduring memory of my childhood summers is time spent bobbing in the surf past the breakers off Shellharbour Beach on an inflatable surf mat. My Dad, the strongest of swimmers was just a few meters away instructing me as to which wave to catch, when to start kicking & what to do to make it back to the beach.

Every now and again a set of 3 monster waves would come along. You could see them emerge on the horizon, slowly the body of the wave would build, adrenaline surging through my being as the wave seemed to darken the sky above. Although I did my best to get ahead of the wave, the outcome was never clear until the wave started to break. I would paddle like mad and pray… This year for me has felt like a slow-motion re-run of my childhood summer on my surf-mat.

Especially tomorrow, we will rightfully and joyfully celebrate that the Christ has come! But approximately 33 years after his birth, we know that the Lord Jesus Christ died - on a cross, in our place, taking the punishment we deserve for our rejection of God (1 Peter 3:18). But we also know that his death wasn’t the end. Three days after his death and burial, we read in all four of the New Testament gospels of an empty tomb (Matthew 28:1-10, Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24, John 20-21). And the future-determining news: He is not here, he is risen! (Luke 24:6)

That news changed everything, because the hope of eternal life, life beyond the grave, became a reality that day (1 Corinthians 15:12-20)

Waiting … It starts to get uncomfortable after a while, doesn’t it? If you’re waiting for something good you get impatient for it and the minutes take hours: seeing an old friend, going to a concert, arriving at your holiday destination. If you’re waiting for something bad you get more and more nervous and you can’t tell if you want the minutes to speed up so you can get it over with or slow down to put off the dread. I can still feel the physical discomfort of my teenage self in the waiting room at the orthodontist’s … every six weeks for three long years. Waiting. Simeon was waiting…

2020 has been a year of announcements. During lock down I sat down and watched some of the PM’s press conferences from start to finish – I’ve never done that before! It felt like each week, even each day, there was an announcement of new restrictions, new rules, new case numbers. Even now these announcements are still going on. They can stir up all sorts of feelings for us – fear, anxiety, uncertainty, perhaps resentment. At the first Christmas, God himself held a press conference. He made an announcement. And he made it through… angels.

As we admire beautiful nativity scenes, it’s easy to forget that the first chapters of Luke’s gospel tell the story of two special babies - cousins whose birth narratives are interwoven, both foretold in the Old Testament, both unexpected. While, we rightly focus on the second baby, Jesus, the first baby in Luke’s narrative is not a nobody either - Jesus later calls John the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. There are interesting comparisons to make too, not least, their parents’ songs, as Mary and Zechariah respond to these surprising arrivals.

I have always enjoyed listening to the song, ‘Mary did you know?’ I enjoy it musically - just saying, there are some amazing versions out there. I enjoy that it dwells on aspects of Jesus’ earthly ministry - drawing my thoughts to what he did and who he is. And bonus, it’s also easy to sing along to! If you are not familiar with the song, it questions if Mary knew what her baby boy would grow up to achieve. Every time I hear it, I am a little bit torn - DID Mary know? What did she think?

Perhaps this Christmas, more than any other for a long while, we’ll remember that even our best days are painfully incomplete – that we are, in fact, still waiting. Like those men and women at the first advent, who waited patiently for God to keep his promises, we too live in eager hope for what we do not yet have.

Join us each day next week, as some of the EQUIP team reflect on the gospel of Luke’s playlist.

This year our Spotify playlist is a little different… it’s not so much the songs we sang together at our conference (though there’s a couple in there) but it’s a list chosen by our EQUIP At Home speakers and MCs. They’re songs that encouraged or inspired them, especially as they prepared for EQUIP these last few months. We asked them to tell us why.