HAND ME DOWN
What it means to be CHOSEN
June 19th, 2023
Colossians 3:12-14, ‘So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.’ (MSG)
EXPECTANT
I wonder what type of girl Mary, the mother of Jesus, was. I have a feeling she was ordinary. Because, in the whole Gospel story, the story of Good News, God has a habit of using ordinary people, sometimes even troubled and broken and unraveled people. It gives me hope for me is why maybe I’d like to imagine that. Because maybe He can use someone like me too for extraordinary tasks, like helping humanity come to know of the saving grace given freely by the Son of man.
Perhaps Mary’s story is the greatest one about a hand me down. Wonder why God chose her, how He chose her. He handed down to her—He entrusted her with—His one and only unique Son. He gazed down through the timelessness, and not only saw a vessel where He could house His Son until the perfect time for His birth. I believe He also saw a heart that was willing to nurture fertile soil in which to grow all the grace and mercy, love and faithfulness, His Son would need for humanity. He must have seen a spirit that was willing to be taught and formed and molded to His perfect purpose for not only Mary, but also the whole of mankind. I wonder what that looked like to Almighty God.
His Word shares very little about Mary while she was being grown for this great of a responsibility, this magnificence of a gift, to carry the Son of man, to birth the Son of God. But Scripture does allude to the posture of her heart. It certainly doesn’t give an illusion that she was an errant, cantankerous teenager, smitten with boys, trashy and flashy, obstinate to her parents. Rather, she seems innocent yet trusting, humble and obedient, when the angel of the Lord visits her, and says to her she has been chosen and is highly favored by God. We are told she is perplexed and wary while, at the same time, we find her faithful and devoted, peaceful, and, best of all, willing. What must it mean to be that willing, I ponder.
Think about what that would mean…to be the mother of Jesus, the Son of God. I wonder of the imagery of all the things the Word intimates that Mary stored up in her heart. How difficult it must have been to let Jesus be Jesus. How vastly it must have hurt to watch her son suffer, to endure what was required of the Son to save mankind, including herself. How deep the grief on that terrible Friday. I can’t fathom the emotions she must have experienced, as she watched them crucify her Son—the very people she had been told He had come to deliver. I wish God’s Word would have described what manifested in Mary as she realized she truly had birthed the One Who had come to save the world from itself and set the captives free. She had been chosen, highly favored, and handed down perhaps the greatest task known to humanity: to birth the Savior of the world. Wow!
I think Mary might have been just another ordinary girl, but she was also special. How extraordinary to be chosen to be the mother of Jesus, the Son of God.
John 3:16, ‘For here is the way God loved the world—He gave His only, unique Son as a gift.’ (TPT)
you are His REMNANT
