Advent: week four
December 24, 2015 § 2 Comments
I’ve been putting off writing a blog post for this final week of Advent because lately, my mind has felt rather like a dry bed of ideas. Any beginning sprig of a thought withers and dies. Then, this morning I cut my thumb on a broken light bulb and found myself barely able to type this meager paragraph, let alone a whole blog post. I decided to see that as a sign and let myself off the hook, but so I won’t have to say I failed in my resolution to blog every week, I’ll share an Advent reflection from last year. Wishing you the merriest of Christmases!
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“For nothing is impossible with God.”
The words leap from the page and lodge in my mind. They are the words spoken by the angel Gabriel to Mary in Nazareth.
The angel tells her she will have a son, not by her betrothed Joseph, but by the Holy Spirit. Her son is the not only the son of Mary, but the Son of God.
Well. How many forms of impossibility can I name here? The impossibility of the existence of God; the impossibility of an angel; the impossibility of an angel speaking to a woman; the impossibility of a virgin having a baby; the impossibility of a baby being the Son of God.
Mary sees the impossibility.
“How will this be?” she asks.
“Nothing is impossible with God,” says the angel.
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary says. “May it be to me as you have said.”
I am struck. Here is Mary, accepting the impossible possibility. How? How?
Because she knows nothing is impossible with God.
I believe a lot of things are impossible with God. I fear God Himself is an impossibility. How many days per week, times per day, minutes per hour, do I doubt God’s presence, doubt God’s power, doubt God’s love? Don’t answer; I don’t want to know.
But the angel says, “nothing is impossible with God,” and Mary nods, opens herself to impossibility, and the Son of God is born.
Mary is receptive. She listens for God, she hears, she receives, and the impossible is made possible within her.
It’s Advent, and I’m thinking a lot about impossible things. I think I see the limits of possibility, a thin line at the border of my life, fencing me in.
But the angel’s words are there in my memory, saying, “nothing is impossible with God,” and something in me stirs. The line begins to blur. Beyond the fence I see a field that stretches on and on, full of green grass gently swaying.
If Advent is about waiting, it’s also about being receptive to what we’re waiting for, and the beginning of being receptive is believing the words of the angel who says, “For nothing is impossible with God.”
Elizabeth: very, very nice essay. I taught Kierkegaard’s *Fear and Trembling* in one class this past term, and he uses just this story to show that Mary, like Abraham, believed the impossible—made the so-called ‘leap of faith.’ Abraham took Isaac to the mountain, ready to sacrifice him but knowing somehow that Isaac would be restored to him. Mary is told she’s be bear the son of God and responds simply ‘I am the Lord’s servant.’ And it was reckoned to them as faith…
Thank you, Dr. Stephens. I have not read as much Kierkegaard as I would like, though what I know about his idea of the “leap of faith” really intrigues me…