God's leading is always toward life with Him

-2-

Mary did not know the design of God before He sent word to her; nor did she know the full story of what this Son of hers would do and what demands would be further made of her.

How easy it is to demand more information, or more time to research consequences before we will acquiesce to what we consider to be the will of God. I am not as at ease in trusting God as Mary was. My sophistication gets the better of me, and will want to know what is being required of me before I sign my name to a fiat. This is a spirit of uncertainty that I had hoped to be done with by now, but I see I am still reserved and non-committal when faced with a too jarring spiritual movement against the routines of my days.

You can be sure Mary had other plans. Or, let’s just say she didn’t always consider that she would one day give birth to the Messiah. So, the announcement to her that she had been identified and chosen for this role of honor and singular importance certainly changed her idea of what she thought she might do with her life.

If God were to announce some peculiar designation to me, I am afraid I am too horribly jaded by the world and even the quality of the Christianity in my culture to be immediately and completely open to a new direction, an unfamiliar role, an unanticipated adjustment. To some extent, this means I am dragging my feet with regard to transformation.

Not that I don’t want transformation! I just don’t want it to be painful or inconvenient. My martyred brothers and sisters who have gone centuries before me must think I am an idiot.

Jesus tells Nicodemus (John 3) that those who are born of the Spirit are like the wind, which blows where it will, and no one knows where it comes from or where it is going. This is as if to say an attachment to Jesus is going to involve a significant disengagement from the things that were formerly considered substantial. This will involve a willingness to let go of answers upon which we are accustomed to insist.

For example, “Where are we going?” Abram, when he left Ur in obedience to God, was told by God that he was going “to a place I will show you.” That’s pretty unspecific. Abram’s call was to life, and the fulfillment of this life was brought through his obedience to God – his close contact with God.

Jesus is updating Nicodemus. The belief to which Jesus calls Nicodemus contains the same vague notion of “a place I will show you” by this mention of wind, but includes the same promise of life. Only now life is more fully described than ever before.

Mary and Abram must have recognized that the call of God upon them was not one of duty, but of life. God will never tell us he has work for us without telling us that he primarily and superlatively has life for us. Possibly this “take” on his will for me will make me less resistant to it.