Written during the Christmas holidays:
Nothing thwarts the soul quite like the unassuming, unexpected anguish which propels us into that blinding spiritual dry spell just before the Christmas holiday. Circumstances. They drag us to this unprotected cell of being far too easily, don’t they? As a church body we have been beckoned into a time of trial. I, myself, can hear continually the annoying tapping, dripping, clawing, scratching of the wicked soul inside of me searching for its escape. There are moments that I feel almost nauseous, pushing away at unrighteousness and praying for the strength to even come to desire what is good. Not that this battle does not rage all year; it does. Simply put, I feel the weight of it far more right now.
Last year, as I was muddling through a completely different kind of pain, the Lord blessed me with a prayer that communicated more than I was able to put to words-- that being Mary’s prayer as she greets Elizabeth in Luke, chapter one. Before simply jumping into the prayer life of Mary (and reverently regarding her as a sinless worshiper of God as it may appear by just looking at this sinless payer transposed by the Holy Spirit into Scripture), look at Mary and Elizabeth’s circumstances.
Elizabeth was a lowly, barren woman in first century Rome. Not only did she lose all opportunity for status among her peers due to being unable to acquire for her husband an heir to his work, she lacked modern medicine to help her through the healing process of this breaking news. We are told Elizabeth is barren. Often, we forget how Elizabeth was told she would never bare children. She did not open the Bible to a particular verse one day and discover that her womb had been closed by God. She knew she was barren because she had tried to have children and had done so unsuccessfully. Perhaps she had been pregnant before. Maybe even a number of times. The pain of losing a child without medicine, guidance, or someone else there to bear with her as she clung to the last evidences of life may have been something through which she had to learn to trust the Lord. And, whether she lost a child in pregnancy or not, we know for certain that there was no one around to whom she could look to identify the source of her medically complex issues.
The lack of medicine may be perceived as a blessing or a curse. No doctor was available to tell her that something, some sin she had committed in the past, provoked her body to the point at which it was no longer fit to carry a child to full term. No one could conceivably leave her wondering if she had tried the wrong diet, gotten too much exercise or too little, torn her body in some previous physically laborious task. No one was there to make her think she had married the wrong man, the one whose DNA did not match hers or the one who didn’t have the money to see the specialist she needed to find whatever small and exhaustively expensive route to pregnancy she could. But, she, Elizabeth, was there with the full knowledge that she could not bare a child. She was there to blame herself, to despise the design of her body that kept her, until she was advanced in years, from playing the role she was “meant” to play in society and in her marriage. Imagine what her day was like, without the cultural consensus that she could be out in the village throughout the day, working a job, and without children at home to raise.
Women have always naturally fractioned around life phases into more secluded friendships. Who would Elizabeth’s friends have been? We are left to infer that there was no one who quite had her circumstances in this particular village of Judah; therefore, there was not a single woman of her years and stature who also had such little direction on how to spend her time or ways to join in the discussion on the morning run to the well.
And yet, we are told that she was “righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord” (Luke 1:6). We also have the opportunity to see this as she interacts with Mary at the end of the chapter. She is blameless not because she is sinless but because something as marvelous as the Holy Spirit graciously coming upon her to speak to the young mother, Mary, in her time of need happened to her even before the death of Christ and indwelling work of the Spirit in all those who believe. She speaks to her by saying, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:42-43). She is so controlled by the grace and truth of the Holy Spirit that she is empowered to speak such words! How marvelous that the woman who waited for the miracle of childbirth until her old age looks on her young cousin who has become pregnant without ever trying and blesses her without a trace of jealousy.
Elizabeth even proclaims that this other woman’s pregnancy is far greater and more a miracle than her own. There is no pride in her own child, but in the Lord she knows is coming. She does not care more for her own pregnancy, instead she cares far more that Mary has blessed her by choosing Elizabeth’s home as her own for the coming months. She is not exhausted by the idea that she must care for this young woman, helping Mary through her morning sickness and ignoring her own, birthing her first child and then immediately setting to work to be sure that Mary’s pregnancy is as smooth as possible, because it is she who carries the Lord.
What grace upon grace has possessed this woman? Surely it must be the years of waiting and understanding that the Lord has the best plan, that children are not our God, that what we want, have, or do with our time is not, in the end, that which defines us before the Lord. She is free from this idol so that she may serve Mary and ultimately her Lord and savior.
Then enters Mary. We always seem to find ourselves at this time of year speculating on how Mary must have felt, a very young, virgin, unmarried woman cast out of her hometown because she was pregnant and unable to explain that it was the Lord’s doing by his Holy Spirit. But, today, grant me the liberty of instead considering what her relationship with Elizabeth may have been like: Imagine for a moment that you are a young high school girl who, though this was not Mary’s exact circumstances, accidentally finds yourself pregnant. Your parents do not want your bad reputation in their house so you’re left with the only option of showing up at your older brother and sister-in-law’s house. This is uncomfortable, not because they’re unwelcoming of you, but because they’ve spent the last ten years trying everything thing they can to conceive a child. You know that they have finally arranged for an adoption that looks like it will go through, but you must now accept the help and care of your barren sister-in-law. How quickly could every little thing you talk about become uncomfortable? Complaining about your circumstances is rapidly pushed off the docket.
Nothing thwarts the soul quite like the unassuming, unexpected anguish which propels us into that blinding spiritual dry spell just before the Christmas holiday. Circumstances. They drag us to this unprotected cell of being far too easily, don’t they? As a church body we have been beckoned into a time of trial. I, myself, can hear continually the annoying tapping, dripping, clawing, scratching of the wicked soul inside of me searching for its escape. There are moments that I feel almost nauseous, pushing away at unrighteousness and praying for the strength to even come to desire what is good. Not that this battle does not rage all year; it does. Simply put, I feel the weight of it far more right now.
Last year, as I was muddling through a completely different kind of pain, the Lord blessed me with a prayer that communicated more than I was able to put to words-- that being Mary’s prayer as she greets Elizabeth in Luke, chapter one. Before simply jumping into the prayer life of Mary (and reverently regarding her as a sinless worshiper of God as it may appear by just looking at this sinless payer transposed by the Holy Spirit into Scripture), look at Mary and Elizabeth’s circumstances.
Elizabeth was a lowly, barren woman in first century Rome. Not only did she lose all opportunity for status among her peers due to being unable to acquire for her husband an heir to his work, she lacked modern medicine to help her through the healing process of this breaking news. We are told Elizabeth is barren. Often, we forget how Elizabeth was told she would never bare children. She did not open the Bible to a particular verse one day and discover that her womb had been closed by God. She knew she was barren because she had tried to have children and had done so unsuccessfully. Perhaps she had been pregnant before. Maybe even a number of times. The pain of losing a child without medicine, guidance, or someone else there to bear with her as she clung to the last evidences of life may have been something through which she had to learn to trust the Lord. And, whether she lost a child in pregnancy or not, we know for certain that there was no one around to whom she could look to identify the source of her medically complex issues.
The lack of medicine may be perceived as a blessing or a curse. No doctor was available to tell her that something, some sin she had committed in the past, provoked her body to the point at which it was no longer fit to carry a child to full term. No one could conceivably leave her wondering if she had tried the wrong diet, gotten too much exercise or too little, torn her body in some previous physically laborious task. No one was there to make her think she had married the wrong man, the one whose DNA did not match hers or the one who didn’t have the money to see the specialist she needed to find whatever small and exhaustively expensive route to pregnancy she could. But, she, Elizabeth, was there with the full knowledge that she could not bare a child. She was there to blame herself, to despise the design of her body that kept her, until she was advanced in years, from playing the role she was “meant” to play in society and in her marriage. Imagine what her day was like, without the cultural consensus that she could be out in the village throughout the day, working a job, and without children at home to raise.
Women have always naturally fractioned around life phases into more secluded friendships. Who would Elizabeth’s friends have been? We are left to infer that there was no one who quite had her circumstances in this particular village of Judah; therefore, there was not a single woman of her years and stature who also had such little direction on how to spend her time or ways to join in the discussion on the morning run to the well.
And yet, we are told that she was “righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord” (Luke 1:6). We also have the opportunity to see this as she interacts with Mary at the end of the chapter. She is blameless not because she is sinless but because something as marvelous as the Holy Spirit graciously coming upon her to speak to the young mother, Mary, in her time of need happened to her even before the death of Christ and indwelling work of the Spirit in all those who believe. She speaks to her by saying, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:42-43). She is so controlled by the grace and truth of the Holy Spirit that she is empowered to speak such words! How marvelous that the woman who waited for the miracle of childbirth until her old age looks on her young cousin who has become pregnant without ever trying and blesses her without a trace of jealousy.
Elizabeth even proclaims that this other woman’s pregnancy is far greater and more a miracle than her own. There is no pride in her own child, but in the Lord she knows is coming. She does not care more for her own pregnancy, instead she cares far more that Mary has blessed her by choosing Elizabeth’s home as her own for the coming months. She is not exhausted by the idea that she must care for this young woman, helping Mary through her morning sickness and ignoring her own, birthing her first child and then immediately setting to work to be sure that Mary’s pregnancy is as smooth as possible, because it is she who carries the Lord.
What grace upon grace has possessed this woman? Surely it must be the years of waiting and understanding that the Lord has the best plan, that children are not our God, that what we want, have, or do with our time is not, in the end, that which defines us before the Lord. She is free from this idol so that she may serve Mary and ultimately her Lord and savior.
Then enters Mary. We always seem to find ourselves at this time of year speculating on how Mary must have felt, a very young, virgin, unmarried woman cast out of her hometown because she was pregnant and unable to explain that it was the Lord’s doing by his Holy Spirit. But, today, grant me the liberty of instead considering what her relationship with Elizabeth may have been like: Imagine for a moment that you are a young high school girl who, though this was not Mary’s exact circumstances, accidentally finds yourself pregnant. Your parents do not want your bad reputation in their house so you’re left with the only option of showing up at your older brother and sister-in-law’s house. This is uncomfortable, not because they’re unwelcoming of you, but because they’ve spent the last ten years trying everything thing they can to conceive a child. You know that they have finally arranged for an adoption that looks like it will go through, but you must now accept the help and care of your barren sister-in-law. How quickly could every little thing you talk about become uncomfortable? Complaining about your circumstances is rapidly pushed off the docket.
No, this was not the basis of the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth. By God’s amazing grace, he had orchestrated that Elizabeth become pregnant just before Mary arrived. And, Mary’s pregnancy was not unwanted or accidental, she was to bare the Christ-child. However, the background of these two women, their previous thoughts and wishes surrounding pregnancy must have dictated their day-to-day relationship quite a lot. But, as we see the women interact in scripture, we find them praising God for the plan he has provided; their circumstances are a privilege through which they may better praise the Lord!
Here is Mary’s prayer alongside the ways in which it has helped to dictate and redefine my thinking about the Lord this season:
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
She already recognizes that he is her savior. Not being a woman of high-rank, she knows the scriptures that promise a savior, though she most likely is unable to read them and meditate on them on her own.
“for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
She states the extent of her own depth of sin. Mary knows and acknowledges that she was not chosen to carry this child or raise him because of her acceptable way of life; she was chosen because God “looked on her humble estate” and had mercy on her.
“For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
She recognizes that she is being blessed, not cursed. Alongside that, she pulls into the forefront of her praise that God is mighty, that he is in control of her circumstances and all the ways of the world and could have performed this miracle any other way he so desired. Yet, with his might, the Lord has done “great things” for her. She is speaking of things that the Lord has already “done”. She is not looking at the future and hopefully wishing for things to work out even though everything looks pretty drab and dreary at the moment. She knows that what he has done, what he has accomplished with the pregnancy and even before in her poor, little village of Nazareth, are "great things”. He has impregnated her before her “time” and by this, allowed her to carry the savior into the World.
“And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”
Mary is quick to recognize that this gift of a savior is only brought through her to her people because it is “in remembrance of [God’s own] mercy”. He has promised it and is completing all that he has said, so as to make his own name great. As he does so, he brings joy and life to those who fear him, he fills them will good things (note that it does not say that he fills the hungry with food as we might assume would follow that line of thought. He fills them with all that heaven provides). God looks on the humble estate of his beloved children and grants them mercy forevermore.
Therein lies the movement provided by such a prayer; we are left in a humble estate-- if we can’t feel it in our hearts, the Lord lets our circumstances reveal it each and every day. And yet, though we are wicked and imperfect in our response to such things, as both these women no doubt were, God looks on us as blameless and humble by the righteousness of His son and allows our circumstances to speak to his work for “the remembrance of his mercy”. May we be helped this season by the examining of the depth to which these women faced the pains of this earth and its sin together. Furthermore, they were the dearest of friends, companions, and worshippers despite their differences and opportunities for jealousy and strife.
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