LK 1:39-45

Laterally Luke…Advent 4…Revised 2018

In making her long trip to visit Elizabeth & share Gabriel’s news - God’s news, really - with her, Mary joins the ranks of those inside & outside the Scriptures who make journeys, physical &/or spiritual, as part of God’s plan for them - & for others. What-ever plans we have for physical journeyings in life, God always knows where He needs us to be. For our own sake, & for that of others! (There are always Godly spin-offs for others when we walk The Way!)

My wife & I have long personal experience of this. 50 yrs ago we lived & ministered on the East coast of OZ. Ask us then where we’d expect to be living 50 years later, & we’d both have answered, ‘On the East coast of OZ, of course- where else!’ God, though, has a different way of looking at things. We’ve no doubt it was God who called us to move on physically - as He’s always calling us to move on spiritually - like we encourage others to do the latter when we preach! First we were moved to the North coast; then, after four years there, to the West coast where we’ve now lived & ministered for 45 of those intervening years. (Oh, & also with 3 months ‘filling in’ in the Centre!) Looking back we can see A Plan bigger than any of ours! 

In the 6th month of Elizabeth’s carrying John the Baptiser to be, Mary visits her relative. To share Elizabeth’s joy-tinged-with-apprehension (?) To tell her her own news of being called to bear the Saviour (apprehension-tinged-with-joy?). I reckon we’re meant to understand JB leaping in Elizabeth’s womb as a display of the spirit-ual energy he’s going to be capable of years later. Tiny steps can lead to larger steps once God confirms, one way or another, that we’re heading in the right direction - spiritually &/or physically. Has our own spiritual energy given any such display at any stage of our life? What’s our spiritual energy ‘rating’ right now?

If we’re called to journey physically, spiritually, or both, to bring somebody - our own self or someone else - to birth for God, then so be it! Amen! Whenever we use the ‘Amen’ word, not least after praying: ‘Your will be done on earth as in heaven…’ we’re opening ourself to a call to move on, one way or another, for God. Are we open to that? Up for that? Do we discern any such call to journey, one way or the other, in the offing at the moment?

 Brian

Afterthought: In ‘Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places’¹ Eugene Peterson comments, ‘Elizabeth & Mary stand at the extremes of impossibility regarding conception, Elizabeth a barren post menopausal old woman & Mary a young virgin.’ Are there ‘extremes of impossibility’ we’re using as an excuse not to make some journey God is calling us to right now. On Advent 4? At Christmas? In the new Year?

¹ p.268. H & S, 2005