Advent 9: Mission, Surprises

I'm having a hard time separating the Christmas story from current life experiences this year.

I read about Mary receiving the news in Luke 1. Life-altering news, to say the least. Things will never be the same, and that's an understatement. She's greatly troubled at first, there are questions that follow, a mind racing, but ultimately a total submission, a sacrifice, a gutsy dying to self: "I am the Lord's servant." In essence, "Whatever he wants to do with me, I'll let him. He's got every right."

I guess there may be danger in comparing my current experience with the ordinary woman who gave birth to the Savior of the world and hasn't been forgotten since, but I read and hear a resonance with sentiments I've expressed recently. She expresses a willingness and God takes her for a serious ride. And all she can say is, like her Son will say later in life, "Not my will, but yours be done." Impressive and inspiring and motivating to me right now.

And as terrified as she probably is? She still can say, "My soul makes God big, my spirit leaps with joy."

Then there are those shepherds we heard about on Sunday. Years before those ordinary unschooled men take up the cause, and years before the smelly fishermen and corrupt tax collectors get recruited, there are the blue-collar shepherds going unnoticed in the hills, who all of a sudden are commissioned to be the ones to spread the news. Thrown into the mission. I love this upside-down God, full of surprises from the very beginning. If he chooses and uses shepherds to declare the glory, surely he can use two nobodies from small-town Pennsylvania, no?