Mary's Visit To Elizabeth

There are a number of important lessons in this text, but I’ll just talk about one more. When God says he will bless someone, he often means something different from what we mean as being blessed.

If you hear someone today saying God has blessed them, often it means things are going well for them. They have good health. They have plenty of money. Their family life is going well. They have a nice home.

Well in our text, Elizabeth says twice that Mary is blessed, and then Mary agrees. I suspect that she wasn’t sure that this was a blessing at all until she heard Elizabeth’s confirmation, but Elizabeth set her free to really accept and celebrate what God was doing. I can hear her saying, “Yes, I really am blessed. Now I can feel it. “

But did Mary go on to have a cushy life? Not at all. She wasn’t able to deliver this special baby at home with her family, where she had made her preparations. She had to take a long, bumpy trip right at the end of her pregnancy. When they finally got into a house, King Herod got word that people were saying a new king had been born in Bethlehem and they had to run for their lives to Egypt to keep Herod from killing their baby. So Christmas is a time to remember the refugees of the world. Being a refugee in a foreign land isn’t what we normally call blessed. Then Jesus began his ministry. And there were days when he was pushing so hard, so exhausted, that Mary thought he had gone off the deep end, so she gathered up some of her other kids to try to get him to just give it up and come home for a while. And of course she was there at the foot of the cross as this special son of hers was publicly tortured to death. Would you put any of those things on your blessings list?

How in the world can you say Mary was blessed? She was blessed because she was right in the middle of God’s will for her life. She was being obedient to God. She had taken her place in God’s great plan of salvation. And what’s better than that?

No human on earth, except Jesus himself gave a greater gift to the human race than Mary did. Sure, she had a few rough years around the birth of Jesus and about 3 rough years of his ministry. But in the end she saw the complete vindication of her sacrifice. She wouldn’t have traded the life God gave her for anything. And she will be honored throughout human history and throughout eternity in heaven. True blessing is not how much stuff you pile up or how cozy you make your life. True blessing is being in the middle of God’s will.

You may think your life is incomplete today, or even a failure because there is some ‘blessing’ that you just aren’t able to have. Maybe you wish you had more money. Maybe you wish your family got along better. Maybe you wish you had a better housing situation.

But maybe God is holding out to you in his hands a blessing that is ten times greater than the things you are obsessing about. Maybe he is holding out for you an adventure in serving someone else. Maybe God is holding out to you the chance to be right in the middle of something wonderful he wants to do. Maybe this is your “Mary Moment,” the day to say “yes” to God like Mary did, to accept the adventure, to dare to risk the comfortable and predictable. Maybe this is your day to ask God what his call is for you today, this week, for your life. Maybe this day will be the beginning of an adventure that will be the best thing you ever did. And remember, God won’t leave you alone. Step out with your eyes open. He just may have an Elizabeth for you, too, an encourager, someone who understands. AMEN