How blessed is your “yes”

Originally posted at: https://www.global-teams.net/blog/general/2018/12/18/how-blessed-is-your-yes/

Dec
18

Mary leaning over baby Jesus in the manger

An Advent devotion by Walter Wangerin Jr.

Mary, mother of our Lord, I wish I could be as pure a disciple as you were even from the beginning!
For you were invited to join a sisterhood—with Tamar and Bathsheba – of sorrow and human suffering, since the child of your womb would draw the hatreds and the outrages of a scoundrel world.
And you said, “Yes.”
For you were asked to serve faithfully on behalf of others, like Rahab to protect a few for the sake of the many, like Ruth to turn disappointment into joy.
And you said, “Yes.”
For it was an angel that spoke to you, a sky-strider, an inhabitant of holy heaven whose face caught fire from standing near to God, whose glory darkened all the common world in which you lived.
Yet you did not hesitate in fear or horror. You said, “Yes.”
Two thousand years before you, another woman heard an angel declare that she would bear a son. Sarah was very old then. Ninety years old. And because of her great age she laughed. Her reaction to the impossible promise was a disbelieving, scornful snort: “After I’m old and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” To her the angel said what Gabriel said to you: Is anything too hard for the Lord? (Gen. 18:9-15; see also Job 42:2 and Matt. 19:26).
Ah, Mary, but your reaction to a promise more impossible than Sarah’s was a sweet, complete obedience and faith: “Let it happen to me according to your word.”
You, the first of all the disciples of Jesus, said, Yes.”
Heavenly Father:
Thank you for the faith of a maiden, in whose obedience your plan for the reconciliation of the whole world was begun. I get you, too, that you might empower me in pure simplicity. Teach my mouth and all my parts to make this single response to whatever task you set before me – this:
Let it be to me according to your word.
“Yes!”
Amen.

From Preparing for Jesus by Walter Wangarin Jr.

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