The Privacy of Calling

Luke 2: 19-20 "Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself. The sheepherders returned and let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen. It turned out exactly the way they'd been told!"

Luke 2: 51-52 "So He went back to Nazareth with them, and lived obediently with them. His mother held these things dearly, deep within herself. And Jesus matured, growing up in both body and spirit, blessed by both God and people."

The shepherds shouted.

Mary was quiet.

The difference? The shepherd's revelation, and the realization of that revelation, had been completed. Mary's revelation was complete, but her realization was still in process.

So it is when God Calls and reveals.

During the incubation period between revelation and realization, we are called to quiet contemplation, to patient trust.

It's not about you. God didn't give you a calling to make you more significant, successful, or prevalent. He called you to glorify Himself, not you.

This is the patience of the pure.

The quiet confidence of the wise.

Secrets are powerful.

Mary and Joseph together held the most powerful secret calling the world had ever known.

Mary never stood on her calling.

She kept it hidden and deep, and made it a place of quiet communion with the One who had Called.

Let's not cheapen or sell our calling to buy attention or status among mankind.

A calling from God is first privately patient, then publicly obvious.

Missions at Christmas

Luke 1:18 Zachariah said to the angel, "Do you expect me to believe this? I'm an old man, and my wife is an old woman."

Luke 1:34 Mary said to the angel, 'But how? I've never slept with a man.'"

Zachariah knew how God worked. That was his job. Zachariah's training in the priesthood should have taught him to fear God. But when God revealed his plans to Zachariah at his point of greatest personal need and pain, he mocked God.

Mary simply questioned how... no disbelief - the Word was a foregone conclusion. Her question was a matter of practical mechanics: "How?" And her heart response was The Magnificat.

Maybe Z. was having a bad day, but his beligerance was effectively silenced.

My stance when God reveals His plans for me matters.

Perhaps Z. was older, and thus more cynical than a young, naive Mary.

In the end - same angel - practically the same message... an impossible but divinely ordained conception. One recipient received it well - one didn't. But in both cases, God's Word was revealed.

When God calls us, our stance and response matter.

Mary stayed on track by keeping something deep in her heart: the warm ember of belief that nothing is impossible with God. She hadn't a clue how - but she knew that.

Zachariah's doubt evaporated the day his son was born, and Z. was required to fulfill the angel's prophecy himself - to write on a tablet that his son's name was John. I wonder if throughout the pregnancy, Z. was on pins and needles, nervous of screwing the whole thing up. Just "waiting for the other shoe to drop." Wondering if the baby would make it to full term? If Elizabeth would, in her old age, survive the labor and delivery? He doubted the initial message... did he doubt all the way through the pregnancy? That doubt, at the critical point of God's revelation of His calling for Z., cost Z. dearly.

Discipleship with Christ is maintaining that flame of belief, so that when my Calling is revealed, my heart question is not "I wonder if...", but rather "I wonder how..."