In the midst of the Mayfield, Kentucky Storm debris, a young Latina mother shifted through the rubble of what was once her home.
"Thank God!" She said as a reporter grilled her on what had happened, "My husband came in the house and told us to all get down that the storm was coming, and it swept everything away, everything we own, our entire house, but I am so thankful today."
"Why?" asked the reporter.
"Because my entire family is alive!", the woman exclaimed, "My children, my husband, we all made it out alive!"
Her sentiments echo those of another young mother, who once faced immense trial and chose to tell herself a story not about what she’d lost, but what she had.
This weekend marks the 4th Sunday of Advent and our introduction to Mother Mary, still pregnant, and off visiting her cousin Elizabeth, who is also pregnant. Elizabeth is elated and sings Mary's praises, including the memorable compliment: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her..."
Mary, an unwed, pregnant teenager is most certainly not where she thought she would have been. What of her reputation and her dreams of a proper courtship, marriage, and motherhood?
We can only imagine all of the things Mary gave up!
Yet Elizabeth calls her ‘blessed’ and Mary owns it.
These are stories of agency - and women who refused to link external forces to the way they chose to talk to themselves - to look at the situation. It’s as if they’re saying: We can decide to claim possibility and take action instead.
This is why Elizabeth calls Mary blessed - we call her blessed.
Mary was blessed because she believed God.
She believed God had a purpose for her life.
She believed God would take care of her.
She believed God knew more about what would fulfill her than she did.
She believed God could bring her through the tornadoes of life - for even destruction and death cannot separate us from the love of God.
It’s the same for you and me.
We can take agency. Thank God.
Once we see that we’re able to own our story, we gain a huge amount of power.
And we retain that power for as long as we refuse to hand it over to someone else.
We choose to believe God
To believe God sees us -
That God has a purpose for our lives -
That God will take care of us -
That God knows more about what fulfill us than we do.
Mary’s story is to trust that God-
It’s to go all in, sign over our lives, give to God suspecting that God will be giving so much more back to us - because God’s love for us is that immense.
And so we ask: who’s story are we believing?
Are we taking the God-given agency over our lives that Mary did?
What’s keeping us from going ‘all in’ with God?
What’s keeping us from trusting - handing over - giving over -
Do we dare to believe the promises, the stories, of God?
And live as if they are true?
And live as if they are true?
0 comments:
Post a Comment