Great Faith
Luke 1:26-38
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
How much time do we spend making plans? We are consumed by countless hours allotted to imagining, shaping, directing and overseeing various aspects of our lives as well as others. Being engaged to Jospeh, Mary must have had plans and hopeful expectations for her life. She is standing on the doorstep of a new life and may have been imagining the pieces of her life coming together in a manner that would usher her into a brighter future.
It was in this season of life that something miraculous occurred. God stepped in and from that moment moving forward, Mary’s life was never the same. The angel declared “Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God.” She didn’t know what this favor would bring, but she rested her faith on the truth that “nothing will be impossible with God.” Mary had plans and expectations but most of all she had great faith.
Collective research has shared with us that there are numerous reasons why we make plans. The details are established in psychological, practical, and emotional factors. We seek to satisfy our need for organization, efficiency, self-control, goals, and achievements by filling our lives while omitting the need for great faith. Mary declared in her response to the angel, “let it be with me according to your word.” Her life was not limited by her emotions and perceptions.
When we are prisoners of our own emotions and perceptions, we stop walking by faith. There is an age-old illustration shared over many years that stated during WWII General McArthur asked an engineer how long it would take to build a bridge across a certain river. “About three days.” The engineer was told to go ahead and draw up the plans. Three days later McArthur asked for the plans. The engineer seemed surprised. “Oh, the bridge is ready. You can cross it now. If you want us to write down the plans, you’ll have to wait a little longer, we haven’t finished those yet.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
prayer
“…to be quiet together for a spell, to sit, to think, to feel our way into each other’s joys and sorrows, to surround ourselves with the great sense of collective destiny. Each one of us has his own cares and burdens, his own world of involvements and complexities of stresses and strains of lights and shadows, of heights and depths, of pain and pleasure in ways that are commonplace and in ways that are shocking. No one of us can live unto himself, no matter how hard he tries. We are so deeply involved in each other and in others that often it is difficult to determine where we begin and the other leaves off. And perhaps in the quietness we may sense the mystery and the wonder and the magic of our relatedness, and in the relatedness become aware of each after the patter of his own sensitiveness of the emergence in our midst of the living spirit of the living God in whom we live and move and have our being. What we discover here in the quietness may inform all of the boundless, limitless spread of mankind everywhere to the end that what we do we know must be done with an eye singled to its bearing upon the least and the greatest, the wisest and the most foolish, the meanest and the righteous of all the children of men. Whisper on our hearts, O God, our Father, the assurance that we seek when we are most ourselves, thou seekest. That when we stumble, thou dost stumble. When we rejoice thou dost rejoice. O thou redeemer of the thoughts and the memories and the souls of men, speak unto us that we may live; breathe through us that we may live; think through us that we may live. For without thee, O God, there is nothing, not even ourselves. This is the simple quivering of our spirit as we wait in the quietness for the movement of thyself within us. Amen.
(Howard Thurman, Meditation & Prayer, Sermons on the Parables)
Daily Lenten meditations each have a companion morning prayer video offered by the same clergy. View the YouTube playlist to find this meditation’s companion video, or to watch others.