Advent
Meditation
December
1st
9.
Is God for me?
Luke
1:28-31 The virgin's name was
Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly
favored! The Lord is with you." Mary was greatly troubled at his
words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel
said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with
God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to
give him the name Jesus.
If
only God would stay in heaven, we'd be all right! I'm sure that's what
some people think. The ‘Deists' of earlier centuries thought like that.
They were happy to believe in a God who created the world, but they
then envisaged Him sitting back and letting it get on without His interference.
It's more comfortable like that isn't it! But this is God's world and
He delights in interacting with the human race. He made us for that
purpose.
Yesterday
we laboured over the possibility of God actually coming. Now we consider
the more personal details of this story. Here we have a young Jewish
girl and an angel appears to her. If that wasn't bad enough – for when
was the last time you encountered an angel? – the angel says she is
highly favoured with God. In fact twice he says that. Now, as we've
suggested in earlier meditations, we very often feel guilt about our
lives and so the thought of God turning up doesn't thrill us! When a
heavenly messenger, in angelic or human form, turns up and tells you
that God is blessed by you, for many that is almost too much to cope
with. Mary was greatly troubled by the angel's greeting; how
would you have felt? Seriously, suppose you were sitting alone at home
one day and suddenly without a door opening, a figure full of light
was standing there saying (in modern language), “Hi, I'm from God. He
wants you to know He's really pleased with you and He's here for you”,
I wonder how you'd feel? Full of immediate joy? I think you'd be more
likely to be full of questions: why me, why at this time, what have
I done to get God's attention, what does He want?
I
said yesterday that it's sometimes difficult
to get behind the Christmas story because we may know it too well. If
you think coping with an angel is easy stuff, you've never really thought
about it in depth. The truth is, of course, that whenever God turns
up and says things to us, it is unsettling. There we were quietly coping
(or struggling) with life and even though it might have been hard going
on a bad day, somehow we can cope with what is familiar. Then God arrives
and suddenly everything is changed. The Lord of the Universe has come
to us, God Almighty, all-knowing, all wise, the One who is so different
from us. That is unnerving!
For
the moment, all He says to Mary, through the angel, is that she will
be having a baby who she is to name Jesus. That seems fairly straight
forward so far, but even this is a life change. Mary has got a question
about it as we'll see tomorrow, but for the moment, it's only something
she would expect to happen anyway. I mean, she about to be married and
married people have children but…. Have you seen the ‘but' yet? You're
still seeing it all through too-familiar eyes if you haven't seen the
‘but'. But why does it need God to come and tell me the obvious. There
must be more to this than meets the eye. There must be a catch in this.
Yes, that's the trouble when God turns up; there's more to it that meets
the eye. There's more to come. Are you ready for God to come and speak
to you like that?
If
you wish to e-mail us any comment on this meditation please click here
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tony.thomas@rochfordcc.co.uk
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