Reflections on Mary, the Mother of Jesus

One of the things that's become an integral part of my spiritual growth this semester is meditative journaling.  Perhaps I'll write more about that at some point.  In short, the he main idea is that instead of telling God what you want him to know (e.g., prayer journaling, etc), you ask Him what He wants to tell you and then you write down what you feel like He says.  I've really grown to treasure this practice in my own life and God has really used this on this leg of my spiritual journey.

This morning, as I was doing my meditative journaling, I felt like the Lord helped me to see the Christmas story more from Mary's eyes than I ever had before.  Obviously as someone who is from the modern West, in her mid-30s, never engaged, and career minded, it's tough to put myself into the shoes of an engaged middle eastern Jew in her early teens who was visited by an angel and told she would give birth to the Messiah.  But the Lord helped me and I understand the story in a different way than I ever have before.

When Mary was first visited by the angel and received his message that she had found favor with God, her first response was confusion and she was disturbed.  After the angel subsequently told her she would have a baby, name Him Jesus, and that He would reign over Israel in a Kingdom that would never end, she obediently embraced this news.  "I am the Lord's servant.  May everything you have said about me come true."  When Mary visits her friend and relative Elizabeth later in her pregnancy, Elizabeth says, "You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what He said."

Is it really that easy?  Is it really just as simple as leading a life that the Lord finds favor with and then walking in the plan that He has for you?  I find myself comforted by that thought.  I don't need to arrange any great heroics -- I just need to humbly submit to the plans that the Lord has for me and trust that He will work out the details.

That's not to say it will be easy.  Here are some excerpts of what the Lord told me this morning as I was doing my meditative journaling.

Mary was visited by an angel of the Lord who brought her "good news" -- but just like her good news upset her impending plans and probably wasn't aligned with her 5, 10, or 30 year plans, neither are my plans for you.  At this point in the story [Christmas Eve], Mary was very pregnant, uprooted from her support system, and traveling to fulfill bureaucratic requirements -- all while carrying the hope of the world, the Messiah, inside of her.  Then she arrived in Bethlehem and not only was the red carpet not rolled out for her, she ended up having a baby in the most disgusting, unlikely, humble of all situations.  The baby was Jesus, and He saved the world.  I gave Him a great cost to me and to Him -- and I did it through Mary.  Her circumstances weren't cushy or fancy: but she obeyed and I did provide for her -- and I will do the same for you.  So as you feel the discomfort and the weight of what I am asking you to do, know that I can accomplish great things through the most humble, unlikely circumstances and that all that is required is obedience and walking in the path I have prepared for you -- even when it seems crazy.

Mary didn't have to hustle and network and explain and make pitches to important people.  She didn't have to justify the legitimacy of her plans to others.  The Lord prepared a plan for her, told her about it, and then she believed it and walked in it.  That's it -- and we remember and honor her 2000 years later because of her obedience and because she found favor with God.  Incredible.  May the same be said of me someday - that I found favor in the eyes of the Lord and I humbly and obediently walked in the plans He prepared for me.