Here I am

The morning devotion today was a reading of Luke 1 and the annunciation of Mary.  It is a familiar text for me - I have done at least 20 Advent retreats over the years and frequently dive deep into this scripture.  Today as I listened to it, three verses stood our:

Greetings Favored One - the Lord is with you

Nothing will be impossible for God

Here am I  - the servant of the Lord

These pretty much sum up my faith.  I start prayer with the understanding that God is with me.  I focus on that and the truth that - like Mary - I am the favored one.  I have a picture on my piano of a mother holding a child and I believe that I am that child being held and cherished by Mother/Father God.  It is an image that has always resonated with me.

 

"Nothing will be impossible for God" is only understood in retrospect.  As I watch people getting their vaccines - yesterday it was 23 year old Hannah - i marvel at the speed and efficacy of these vaccines that we now seem to be taking for granted.  It amazes me when I look back - at the progress, the blessings, the miracles of life.  I know - as I wrote in a previous post - that life is hard and not everything is wonderful and glorious.  I also hold this truth - that the God of love is at work - often in subversive hidden ways - bringing  love, healing, unity into this broken, wounded and fractured world.  

Here I am - is - I hope - my stance.  Not always, but often.  Yesterday in Bible study I quoted William Barclay's commentary which said that Jesus was sinless - meaning he was living out the will of God. That sort of speaks to my belief that sin is what separates us from God.  And so when we are in the stance of "Here I am" - use me, guide me - we are connecting to the very source of life.  Of course, I act like it is easy to know the how.  And I don't always know that HOW do you want to use me.  But I trust that eventually it will be revealed - if I hang in enough.

I looked at this picture this morning of the mother holding the child and thought - God is holding us that way and asking us to hold each other in the same way.  Maybe that is a clue to the HOW.

Yesterday Pastor John included one of my favorite readings in our Wednesday worship.  It fits well for today's rumination.

 

Trust in the Slow Work of God
by Pierre Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown, something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
-- that is to say, grace --
and circumstances
-- acting on your own good will --
will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser. Amen.