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12-8-21 Glenda Simpkins Hoffman
Every year as I read through Jesus’ birth narrative, I marvel at Mary, a young teenager who is visited by the angel Gabriel and informed she is about to experience an unexpected pregnancy. 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” (Luke 1:30-33).
Yes, it must have been amazing to have an angel appear before you with this astounding news, but the first words she heard were “Do not fear.” What was said must have brought questions and concern. What will she tell Joseph? What will others think? This news was not the life she was expecting or planning for, and it very well could have rattled her sense of peace and wellbeing.
But notice she doesn’t question why this is happening to her. She, like every Jewish person of her day, longed for the Messiah to come. To hear that this long-awaited hope was about to be fulfilled didn’t seem to surprise her. It was good news. Her only question is about how it will happen: “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.”
Once that is explained, Mary’s response is what is remembered: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (v. 38). God promises to be with her in the journey, and she responds by being willing to go on the ride—the risky adventure of following God wherever he leads.
In his book Desiring God’s Will, David Benner writes, “Among the many reasons Christians honor Mary is the fact that as the first Christian—the first to accept Jesus within her—she models perfect surrender. Mary was the first to accept that redemption should take place in the way we do not want it to take place; ruining all our plans, all our expectations, causing them to fail. Mary agreed to allow God to deprive her of the one thing we count most basic among our natural rights—the right of self-control. Mary simply trusts God knew best.
“With only one basic biological question and without argument, she placed her trust in God….The demands on Mary’s trust in God did not end at the annunciation. It got even worse. For the first thirty years, the grand promises made to Mary seemed to be unfulfilled. There were only the vaguest of signs that this son by such mysterious means was destined to reign over the house of Jacob forever as the Son of the Most High. Her absolute trust in God could equip her to receive the rebuff that Jesus seemed to offer her on several occasions. At every point, even standing at the foot of his cross and giving her son back to God, Mary freely offered her unequivocal consent to God’s will.
“Her constant life posture was, ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me as you have said.’ God does not ask for resignation based on acquiescence in the absence of a better option. Nor does God ask for reluctant, grudging submission. What God wants is surrender based on love and trust. This is what we see in the life of Jesus. And it is what we see in the life of his mother, Mary—because she dared to trust the promise that God was with her and for her.”
Mary shows us that the pathway to peace is surrender. She listens to God’s word. She responds in faith and trust in God’s love and goodness for her, her family, her people, the world.
Every Advent, I name my place in my own journey with God, and every Advent, Mary’s
model inspires me to listen to his word, be vigilant in prayer, and surrender to God’s good will in whatever circumstances I find myself.
But I have to confess, that in the challenging circumstances of my own life the past two years, finding my own words to pray often leads me down the rabbit hole of my own thinking and sometimes to worry. So almost daily for the last 18 months, part of my prayer time has been spent praying The Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr. Serenity is defined as “a state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled.” The most famous lines of this poem have been adapted by Twelve-Step programs: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.
But the rest of the prayer speaks volumes to me as it explains how surrender leads to serenity or peace. I like the latest and most well-known version best because it speaks of grace:
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that you will make all things right,
If I surrender to your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
The truth is, we don’t have control of everything that happens to us. Sometimes, all we can do is choose to respond in faith to God and his love and goodness. The prayer is really an expression of surrender. A key element of the prayer is letting go of, not dwelling on the past. And there is a refusal to worry about the future. Instead, we choose to live fully in the present this day, this moment, because that is all we really have. The present moment is the opportunity to choose to experience God, receive his love, and rely on his grace for what is needed in our lives right here, right now.
I love the honesty of the prayer. It reminds me about what is real, what is true whether I like it or not. Hardship is a part of life that cannot be avoided, but only we can accept it as the pathway to peace. Hardship causes us to run into what is real, what is true in reminding us that we are not sovereign, we are not in control. Only God is. Peace often eludes us because we try to maintain control and exercise power to make things happen the way we think they should. But Mary’s example and the prayer help us to realize that surrender to God, trusting his love and goodness, even when our circumstances are challenging, is what leads to peace that surpasses understanding.
For idealists and perfectionists, it’s hard to “take this sinful world as it is and not as I would have it.” Hasn’t God called us to participate in exercising justice by helping to make things right, to help make the world better? Yes, he has. But we have to keep the long view. God has been moving his redemptive plan forward for millennia. We are part of what he is unfolding, but he is the one who will ultimately make all things right. Hardship leads to peace because we run into the reality of own limits and power, but this opens us, make us ready to surrender to God. As we do, we allow his love, grace, and power to do in and through and for us what we can’t do for ourselves and the world in his way and in his time.
Every Advent, I listen over and over to Amy Grant’s version of “Breath of Heaven” It captures both the challenge and even difficulty of Mary’s calling, but it also expresses her willing surrender to God, his love, his plan: “…Do you wonder as you watch my face, If a wiser one should have had my place. But I offer all I am for the mercy of your plan. Help me be strong. Help me be. Help me. Breath of heaven hold me together. Be forever near me. Breath of heaven. Breath of heaven, lighten my darkness. Pour over me your holiness. For you are holy.” While Mary’s circumstances were unique, her prayer captures the questions and longings of the human condition as well as the posture of surrender.
This year, I am receiving Advent devotions in my inbox that include reflections on a Biblical passage with a painting, a poem, and a song to complement the theme for the day. I was surprised that for the devotion on Mary, the author chose the Beatle’s Song “Let It Be” sung by Aretha Franklin: “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be. And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree, There will be an answer, let it be.…”
Whatever your circumstances may be this Advent season, may you too be inspired by Mary’s example and words, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” May you remember the one who entered the world as a baby, prayed in the garden, “Thy will, not mine be done,” and accomplished for us on the cross what we could not accomplish on our own. And may you find the path to peace as you surrender to God’s goodness and love for you, offering all that you are to his gracious will and plan. Let it be.
