Expect Grace

Little boy lying in the hay
You've become my whole world today
I'm overwhelmed

Frightened... amazed... I don't know what to say...

I didn't see this coming
I don't know what to do
I'm lost in trepidation
The thought of loving you...

Grace for today, grace for this moment
My gift from his heart, to trust what is God-sent
Every day I am given, his mercies are new
Each moment I draw breath, his promise proves true.

A purpose so much higher than me,
A promise we've waited ages to see
I'm overwhelmed...
I never would have thought -
Never could have imagined -
I don't know why
You chose me.

Grace for today, grace for this moment.
My gift from his heart, to trust what is God-sent
Every day I am given, his mercies are new
Each moment I draw breath, his promise proves true.

Little boy lying in the hay
You've become my whole world today.

For those of you that will be at church on Sunday morning, if the great snowstorm of 2010 doesn't hit first, I have an explanation.

I will try to explain Sunday before I sing this song, but standing on a platform I am feeble and weak-tongued and all so I will probably not make a whole lot of sense. Which is why I want to pour out all my thoughts so at least the two or three people that read this will understand what I'm saying.

Or four.

As long as I can remember, I have always felt a connection to Mary. When I read about her, I can see her. I can hear her thoughts.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that she was divine. I'm not saying she was perfect. Nor am I saying that I possess the goodness and faith she must have had to be the chosen mother of the Messiah. I'm just saying... I get her.

The Bible says that Mary "pondered all these things in her heart." She stored up every angelic visitation, every prophetic utterance that suddenly came to life in front of her eyes - within her own body even, and thought about it long and hard. I'm a ponderer as well. I take it all in, I process it, I roll it around in my brain over and over until I have taken all the sense I can from a thought before I set it on a shelf in case I have need of it again.

If this sounds insane and you want to recommend I see a psychiatrist... well that's why I don't typically share these things. Or maybe I do.

Mary had to know. She had to have had a clue to the future events, especially when crazy kings started trying to kill her baby boy and they had to escape to Egypt for safety. She knew that baby was destined for big things. Painful things. Excruciating events for a mother's heart to endure. She heard the warning. A sword would pierce her own side. Just as I felt my daughter's pain recently when someone she thought was her friend was cruel, just as I matched every tear she cried with my own, Mary would feel every lash of the whip, every thorn that tore her son's flesh, every ignorant, mocking voice from the crowd of people that had joined their voices with their ancestors through the ages and pleaded for a Savior.

So how did Mary cope, staring at that helpless, soft and warm little creature, all the while with hormones running rampant through her body, knowing that someday he would allow himself to be led to the altar of sacrifice and slaughtered like an innocent, silent lamb?

I suppose she had to handle the weight of that knowledge, every moment of terrible foreshadowing with the same God-given grace that we who know him live every day, every moment counting on. The Bible says that God will give us peace, peace that surpasses all human understanding and explanation. He promises this peace will come only in those moments we require it. In other words, he'll be there to hold us up in every moment he allows that could crush us without his help.

What he doesn't give us the grace for is worry. When we borrow trouble from tomorrow, when we play the "what ifs" over and over in our mind and start to tremble and buckle under the burden, God cannot give us grace to do what he warned us against. He won't enable our sin.

So Mary had to take one day, one moment at a time. She had to accept his grace, his peace, his mercy for the things he allowed, and trust that he would see her through the dark days ahead.

And so, if the little boy lying in the hay has become your whole world, as he has mine, expect resistance. Expect pain, ridicule, misunderstanding, and struggle.

But even more, expect grace.