Embracing the Impossible Dream - A Word from Mary's Story

Hi Friends,

I'm sitting here in Starbucks working on the new book about Mary, Jesus' mom, WRESTLING WITH WONDER.  I am amazed at how deeply her story speaks into my life (and hopefully will speak into yours!).  By looking at God through her eyes, I'm seeing Him more clearly, and in more surprising ways, in mine.  

So, I thought it would be fun (and hopefully encouraging for you!) to share a short excerpt from chapter one.  If God is calling you deeper, if you want more of Him in your everyday life, then read on . . .

EXCERPT:

“Nothing is impossible with God,” Gabriel says, echoing the words of the angel to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18:14 (NIV):  “Is anything too hard for the LORD.”  God kept his promise to a long-barren couple and so the nation of Israel was born.  He will keep his promise to Mary as well.  And to you. And me.

And Christ will be born in our lives, in our circumstances, in our every-day encounters.  Because Gabriel literally says, “For every word will not be impossible with God.” Every word.  That means everything God says, everything he plans, everything he dreams, is now possible.  Even a nation being born from a barren woman.  Even a young virgin giving birth to the savior of the world in a backwoods, out-of-the-way village in Galilee.  Even God transforming your everyday, sometimes-boring, sometimes messed-up, sometimes-confusing and frustrating and doubting and imperfect life into something amazing, for his glory.

God has revealed himself to Mary, and also to us.  He is the God of the impossible, he always has been.  He is the God who calls us to joy, to abandon fear, to release our dreams to embrace his.  

So what will be our answer?  Mary’s was a resounding, “Yes!”  “I am the Lord’s slave,” she said.  “May it be done to me according to your word.”  She proclaimed herself fully belonging to God - his slave, his servant, his handmaiden, one with no rights of her own, no separate life, no eight-to-five job and the rest of her time was her own.  She chose to be a person who fully, wholly, belonged to her Master.  

She surrendered.  And she didn’t need great understanding, or to have everything all figured out, or to see God’s plan from beginning to end.  She had no idea what her surrender would really mean.  She didn’t know it would lead to a manger, to a cross.  But she did know that God called her to lay down her dreams, her plans, in order to embrace His. 

Will you lay down your plans too?  Will you embrace the wild, impossible dream God has for you?  Will you surrender?  Do you dare . . .