Luke 1:39 - 45
At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”
"Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!"
There are moments when I'll believe anything from God, when I can hear and trust even the most improbable things from God's hand.
A few years ago, before I was a part of The Center for Christian Spirituality, I had a vision for building a retreat center and out of that facility offering retreats, classes, spiritual direction, workshops, conferences . . . basically all the things I now have the opening to do through The Center for Christian Spirituality in Houston.
I met with architects and builders in order to hear about costs and projections. I wanted to know how large the mountain was that I was about to climb. Serious. I believed this thing was going to happen, and any day!
The cost? $20 million. At least, that's what I heard. So I prayed the $20 million. It started off sounding far away. To this day, I have no idea what $20 million looks like, but -- I'm serious -- it seemed like no big deal to me. I was convinced that God wanted this retreat center to happen, and I was sold out that God would provide whatever was needed to bring it to pass.
Talk about faith!?!? I believed in this!
[It's a different meditation if I have to write about the perils of claiming something is God's will, or that I've heard God's voice, or that I'm following God's calling . . . and then come in on the back side to realize that it wasn't God's voice at all, but rather Jerry's wishes. I'll save that reflection for another time.]
Then I went to another meeting with an architect, and he said something like, "This $2 million has really put this project out of reach. I don't think it's going to happen."
TWO million?? What?? Are you kidding me? I've been wrestling with this thing for TWENTY million, and you're telling me that $2 million is out of reach?
Well, the retreat center did not happen, not for $20 or even $2 million. Instead, God opened doors at Chapelwood United Methodist Church in Houston to begin The Center for Christian Spirituality.
[By the way . . . I've noticed how quick God was to get me out of the fund-raising business!!]
My point is that for a moment in time, I believed. I really believed. I trusted that "all things are possible with God." I've had other short moments of that kind of trust along the way, maybe not as grand as that one example, but a few here and there where I've really trusted that God was big enough to do what seemed impossible to me.
But I don't really live there all the time. Those moments, for me anyway, give way to the rest of my life, to all the undulations of daily life, to the ordinary tasks of each day and the mundane details of daily living. It's very easy for me to lose an "all-things-are-possible" mentality in favor of ordinariness. I don't intend that life be this way, it just is. I'm up and down, trusting and not trusting, hearing then deaf, seeing then blind.
So it's one thing for Mary to believe God's design when Gabriel shows up on her doorstep and invites her to step into this venture with God. She says, "Yes." She believes. "Here I am, your servant. Let it be done to me as you have said."
It's another thing for Mary to continue to live into this design, to continue to step into this invitation from God . . . even when life is very normal, very routine . . . like when she's visiting friends and relatives (Elizabeth). When Mary shows up in this text, she is still living into the invitation that Gabriel offered, even though he is now off the scene. Mary seems to trust, even in the mundane things of life.
I've heard Paula d'Arcy say, "God comes to us disguised as life." Trusting the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary is not always easy. In fact, rarely is it easy.
But there is another thing in this passage that strikes me. It is Elizabeth recognizing and affirming Mary's trust. Elizabeth blessed Mary for holding her faith, continuing on in trust, even though she doesn't fully understand what that means. In acknowledging Mary's bent toward God and her ongoing belief in what God had promised, Elizabeth blessed Mary.
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