“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.” Mary’s Magnificat is one of the most beautiful prayers of faith and trust that God has all things in hand. As we remember Mary, our thoughts turn to her story in Luke’s gospel. “God sent the angel Gabriel to a virgin named Mary. The angel said, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered.
“May your word to me be fulfilled.”
May your word to me be fulfilled. Wow! God asks something impossible of Mary. Yet rather than tremble in fear or offer reasons why this impossible thing cannot happen, Mary’s amazing and humble response is; may your word to me be fulfilled.
Last week Fr. Chris encouraged us to look at the Lord’s prayer as a means of finding unity. I want to apply the same concept and encourage us to also look at the Lord’s prayer with fresh eyes. For in it, we find an echo of Mary’s amazing response. “Thy will be done.” Now, I am as big a fan of King James as the next guy, but I have a problem with this particular phrase. For it is too often easy to say thy will be done and instead hear and think MY will be done. So can we agree instead to say YOUR will be done?
May your word to me be fulfilled – your will be done. God set before Mary an impossible task and her response was; Lord, your will be done. My question to each of us is; what impossible task has God set before you? Mary had found favor with God, but each of us is a beloved child of God and we too are given tasks, so what impossible task has God set before you?
It can be hard to discover, but for a clue, we turn again to the Lord’s prayer. “Forgive us our trespasses as we have forgiven those who trespass against us.” Matthew puts it this way, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Perhaps the seemingly impossible task God has set for you deals with forgiveness. So, let me offer three opportunities you may ponder that deal with forgiveness.
Perhaps God is calling you to forgive someone who has wronged you. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. We ask God to forgive our debts, but we must also remember that we are called to forgive others in the very same way. So, in this season of preparing for the coming of Christ, who do you need to forgive? Search your heart, for that is where the answer lies. But Rick, you are thinking, I am the one who was wronged. They hurt me badly and I am not ready or able to forgive them for that! This is precisely why God has set this impossible task for us. For only by forgiving can we begin to heal. Mary didn’t have the power on her own, it was only by surrendering herself to the power of the Spirit that God’s purpose was accomplished. Lord, your will be done.
Perhaps God is calling you to forgive yourself. You may have done things you would rather not admit. Maybe you have failed to do things which you know you should have done. We tend to keep these private hurts buried deep inside us, but they have a way of coming out when we least expect and can sabotage our best efforts. God does not want us to be miserable. Perhaps the impossible task God has set for you is to forgive yourself. For God in his mercy has already forgiven you; so be a bit kinder to yourself. There is a lovely phrase from the compline service that is applicable here. “What’s done is done, what’s not done is not done. Let it be.” Lord, your will be done.
Perhaps God is calling you to forgive Him. It has been my experience that many of us carry around a good deal of anger with God. You may have lost someone you love in an unfair way. You may have an illness that brings you pain or keeps you from doing the things you want. It could be that your life has not turned out the way you hoped it would. Maybe you envisioned a life of great import that would take you to far away places to do amazing things, and that has not come to pass. In Faith Matters we are looking at the movie “It’s a wonderful life”. George Bailey carries around anger like this. He had planned for a life of greatness yet found himself stuck in a mediocre existence. His self-centered plea was “I want to do what I want to do.” Yet that was not to be, and this made him angry and unhappy. It is only after a glimpse at the impact his mediocre life has on other people that he finally understands that life is to be lived not for himself but for others. Perhaps, like George, we are being called to the impossible task of forgiving God for the things He has done, or for the things He has not done for us. May your word to me be fulfilled – Lord, your will be done.
Make no mistake, these things are hard. Forgiveness is not easy as it means we must first confront pain; the pain of things that have happened or the pain of things we wanted that didn’t happen. But these impossible things for us are decidedly NOT impossible for God. We need to remember that we are not in this alone; God is there for us and we need not be afraid.
As we continue our journey to Bethlehem to prepare for the coming of Christ, let us prepare ourselves by seeking to forgive, just as we seek to be forgiven. And like Mary, let our answer to the impossible be “May your word to me be fulfilled – Lord, your will be done.”