Today's Gospel

How to Collaborate with God Every Day

This is a reading we encounter quite often in the church year. It's the story of Mary discovering that she is pregnant with Jesus. Elizabeth is pregnant with John the Baptist, and Mary goes off in all haste to visit Elizabeth, to serve her during her pregnancy, to take care of her. When she arrives, the child, John the Baptist, dances for joy within her womb because the child recognizes the presence of God in Mary's womb. We've spoken about that in the past. And so we get a little bit deeper into the reading this time. Elizabeth then goes into this sort of song, this hymn of praise. "Blessed are you among women. Blessed the fruit of your womb." And from here we get a good chunk of the Hail Mary, which incidentally, Christians are often accused of making up, but a great majority of it comes straight out of the Scriptures. And then Elizabeth is sort of like, "Why has God granted me this favor? Why are you visiting me? I should be taking care of you. You shouldn't be taking care of me." But that's the humility and the example of Mary that she just sets over and over and over again. And then there's this line that the reading ends with, "And blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what God had spoken to her."

We all want our lives to be blessed. We perhaps don't think about it in those terms. We all want our lives to be blessed in different ways in different seasons of our lives. How do you want your life to be blessed at this time? How do you want the life of the people you love to be blessed at this time? How do you want your nation to be blessed at this time? How do you want God to bestow blessing at this time? I think having some clarity around that is important, but the other thing is to understand there's a dynamic here. A dynamic is revealed here. "And blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what God had spoken to her." So what are the elements here? God spoke. Someone believed, and there was great blessing. So God speaks. Are we listening? God speaks. Do we believe Him? Do we take Him at His Word, and is our life blessed? Are our lives blessed? Already abundantly. Right? Do we have an appreciation of that and the joy that flows from that appreciation, or are we focused on only how we next want our lives to be blessed? Whatever that blessing might be, it would only be a tiny fraction of the blessing that already exists in each of our lives. And so in that one line, we sort of see this model being set up. God speaks. Someone listens. Someone believes, and great blessings flow from that.

And so the takeaway for us today is what is God saying into your life. Maybe He's saying something into your life through the Scriptures. Maybe He's saying something into your life through the people in your life. Maybe He's saying something into your life through the events of your life or the events of the world. But God is speaking. Are we listening? When we hear what He has to say to us, do we believe? Because if we believe, then that triggers action. And it's this collaboration that ignites blessing. It's this collaboration. Throughout salvation history, what do we see? Do we see God doing spectacular acts on His own? No. Salvation history is a story of God and man collaborating, God collaborating with humanity. God loves collaborating with humanity. God's preference is to collaborate with humanity. God's preference is not to do some spectacular act all on His own. His preference is collaboration. And here, of course, we see beautiful collaboration with these two women, Elizabeth bearing John the Baptist, Mary bearing Jesus. God didn't have to put either of those children in a womb to bring them to the earth, but He did. Why? Because He loves collaboration. He wants to collaborate with you. How is God inviting you to collaborate with Him in this season of your life?