“God is free to change your plans”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Sunday, December 24, 2023
Luke 1:26-38 (Forward, p. 56) CEV p. 1055
I’m sure that this came as a total and absolute surprise. I mean, how many pre-teen girls get visits from angels, and from the archangel Gabriel, God’s chief spokesperson no less. And how many young girls receive anything like the message that the angel imparted. Imagine: she was to be the mother of the Messiah! Wow.
I’m pretty sure that this was not at all what she had imagined for her life. (I mean, yes, probably lots of women in first century Palestine had the faint hope that she might be the one, but probably very few took it seriously). What I imagine was going through Mary’s head were visions of wedded bliss, a loving and caring husband, a bevy of healthy and mischievous kids and a rather settled and predictable lifestyle and existence.
She was probably not at all like the Mary of the hit Christmas play by William Gibson, “The Butterfingers Angel, Mary & Joseph, Herod the Nut, and the Slaughter of 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Tree” (usually called ‘The Butterfingers Angel’ for short). Here, in this play, Mary was an unusually headstrong rather spoiled young lady, who announces to the angel when he told her of the birth, “No way, I have other plans. I’m not going to be stuck in this hellhole with a bunch of screaming kids. I’m going to Jerusalem to make something of myself.” Our Mary, the Mary of the nativity, probably didn’t say anything of the sort, but almost certainly, she did have other plans.
And whoa, there was even more to this announcement. Her beloved, her fiancé Joseph, was not to be the child’s father! Whoa. What? No, the angel was saying, God would be the father through the action of the Holy Spirit. This for us today, even as it was for Mary back then, was a pretty big idea to get one’s head around.
But worse still, what would the family think? What would the neighbours think? I mean, when it ‘come out’—as it invariably would in a small town—that Joseph was not the child’s biological father! Not only would there be tongue-wagging and a scandal, but possibly even worse. Who knows how people might react? She could be stoned to death! And little did Mary
know, but there was far more in the future, far more unsettling and nasty things in the life of this soon to be born son, Jesus.
But all of this was part of God’s plan, part of His newly changed plan for her life. As I suggested in my title, God is free to change our plans. And, is this not the testimony of story after story in our holy Scriptures. Moses was content, for a time, to lead the pampered and comfortable life of a member of the Egyptian royal family—but God had other plans! Nehemiah was well-settled in his role as personal assistant to the king of Persia—but God had other plans. Esther had a privileged existence as wife and consort to yet another Persian king—but God had other plans. Peter, Andrew, James and John had a rather predictable and fulfilling life as fishermen—they knew no other existence—but God had other plans. The future apostle Saul, later known as Paul, was well settled in the Jewish faith as a staunch Pharisee—but God had other plans. This, I must add, is the story of countless people, God’s people throughout recorded history—and indeed, it is part of my own story. God has other plans
But what is even more remarkable, with Mary, and with these others as well, is that they said ‘yes’, ‘yes’ to God—even though they didn’t have the faintest idea of all that this would involve. And that, too, is what He asks of us: that we, too, will say ‘yes.’ And what is at stake here? It was only through these ‘yes’s’ that God was able to work in our world. After all, He has no hands or feet, no voices, except ours, to do what needs to be done here on planet Earth. So, we, you and I, need to say ‘yes’ as well. You see, you and I are part of God’s ‘other plans.’
Forward notes: “Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word” (verse 38).
“Everything one might think about an unmarried young woman who finds herself pregnant is dismissed by the magnitude of Mary’s faith. This humble young woman unknown in the world, made vulnerable by her condition, responds to the angel. She accepts that hers is no ordinary pregnancy. ‘Here I am,’ she says.
“It’s natural to wonder exactly how her pregnancy came to be, but that question is the wrong one, a distraction to the miracle of her openness to bearing Jesus. Mary takes giant risks when she accepts her condition with grace and sacrifice. She is wise beyond her years, the perfect mother for Emmanuel.”
Moving Forward: “Read the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). How do Mary’s words inspire you today as we celebrate the eve of Christ’s birth?”