Monday meditation: ‘God came down,’ Part 1: Accepting the call
Sometimes believers in God forget his habit of asking his servants to step toward something that seems impossible. And sometimes we overlook how difficult life became for God’s followers who answered such a call.
• Abraham, for example, lived with an unhappy wife and was asked to sacrifice his son.
• Noah endured ridicule from his community and then the trauma of seeing them all destroyed.
• Moses clashed with the most powerful man on earth before leading the horde of his fellow Hebrews into an unknown future where he dealt with their doubt and disobedience and dissatisfaction until the day he died.
• Job endured suffering and loss.
• Prophet after prophet had the unpleasant task of telling their countrymen they must change their ways, and often they suffered because of it.
• Nehemiah repeatedly faced nitpicking naysayers who questioned his motives as well as his methods.
• The apostles became martyrs, and John died in lonely exile.
And at Christmas, we consider Mary, whose calling from God was unimaginable, not only because of what it promised, but also because of what it demanded; not only because of how it was delivered, but also because of how it was received.
This frightened girl faced an unearthly being who informed her she would do something beyond belief. How could this peasant teenager be trusted with the heavenly task the angel described? But although what he told her was unfathomable, she simply submitted to it.
Christmas carols and holiday cards paint a mysterious and beautiful picture of what followed, the birth of God’s own Son. But Mary’s reality also included months of gossip from a skeptical community followed by a difficult journey, an isolated delivery, and fleeing in fear of death with her infant to a foreign land.
Later she was confused by the boy’s growing demonstration of his divinity and devastated by his execution when she knew he had done nothing wrong.
As it was for Mary, it has been for uncounted scores of believers since. Yielding to God’s call almost always leads to difficulty, if not hardship and heartache.
Yielding to God’s call almost always leads to difficulty.
So when the God-fearing caregiver considers how hard life has become for him, he does well to avoid complaint. Likely none of us has been confronted by an angel, but probably each of us has been frightened by the weight of our call. We weren’t prepared for this turn in the road. Like Mary, we might have heard ourselves asking, “How can this be happening?” And like Mary, we discovered the will to follow through when we gave up questioning and said simply, “I am the Lord’s servant.”
When we see our caregiving as God’s work and not just our responsibility, we have new resolve. When we realize he’s called us to show his love to the person in our care, we embrace that privilege.
When we accept that no one cares about our loved one quite as we do, we vow to seek strength to continue that service yet another week. We believe God is at work, even if we can’t understand why he’s chosen this way to work through us.
Read: Luke 1:26-38
Pray: Help us remember, Lord, that you always knew this wouldn’t be easy. Help us to find in you strength for each day and purpose for each duty. Help us somehow to feel your love with a measure that allows us to share it with the person in our care.
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