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Good morning, If you were listening to Radio 4 this time yesterday, you’ll have witnessed that strange few minutes in which the Today programme went off air as an emergency alarm interrupted the show until normal service resumed. In those minutes, social media was awash with confused listeners wondering what had happened. Something entirely unexpected had broken in, an interruption to the usual programming, and that familiar space in which Thought for the Day can normally be found was replaced by a kind of limbo. In that moment, many of us were impatient for the familiar to return, finding the unknown disruptive and disorientating. During Advent, which began on Sunday, Christians wait in limbo between the now and the not yet – a strange space that looks forward to the birth of not just a royal baby but the kingdom of righteousness, love, joy and peace that accompanies him. We’re not just waiting for normal service to resume but look forward to something completely new. This radical new kingdom is articulated in the Magnificat – sung by Mary, when – pregnant with Jesus – she visits her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist. In this ancient hymn, Mary sings of this new coming kingdom in the present tense – and describes it as a place where God has scattered the proud, displaced the mighty, raised up the humble and the meek and filled the hungry with good things. In this place, the rich have been sent away empty. As a pregnant woman myself, I recognise the task of having to wait for this wonderful new birth but yet the impatience that comes in the waiting; the counting down that can feel long, arduous and uncomfortable. But yet the recognition that in this time of waiting comes the work – the nesting, the vitamins, the preparation – that will hopefully make that wonderful new birth possible, at just the right time. But if I’m honest, there are times during pregnancy when I feel like crying out like the Psalmist does: “How long, O Lord?” There is a restlessness that comes in the waiting. As the 19th century hymn by Walter C Smith goes: Earth was waiting, spent and restless, with a mingled hope and fear, faithful men and women praying, 'Surely, Lord, the day is near: Like in pregnancy and the Advent season, yet perhaps unlike those moments in which radio stations go off air, our waiting is not passive. Waiting itself has a purpose; it prepares you for what is to come: in pregnancy it comes before new birth and for Christians during Advent, ahead of Christ’s new world order. Perhaps, as R S Thomas writes in his poem Kneeling: The meaning is in the waiting.