March 25, 2011
Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord
By Melanie Rigney
Then Isaiah said: Listen, O house of David! Is it not enough for you to weary people, must you also weary my God? Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us!” (Isaiah 7:13-14)
Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will. (Psalms 40:8-9)
Brothers and sisters: It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats take away sins. For this reason, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; in holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight. Then I said, ‘As is written of me in the scroll, behold, I come to do your will, O God.’” (Hebrews 10:4-7)
Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:30-33)
Piety
Lord, please continue to guide me and my feeble efforts to do Your will.
Study
I was twenty-eight, newly married, working for a company that had cut all salaries by 25 percent just after we’d moved to a state with a much higher state income tax rate. I had very definite ideas about the way a news operation should run, especially about the fact that the plum shifts and assignments went to the people who had been around for a while. Newbies had to pay their dues the same way I had, working weekends and nights.
The best writer in the bureau was maybe a year out of college. He had all kinds of great ideas for features, and he loved covering pro sports, especially basketball. But I doled out the perks to the more seasoned employees because, well, they’d paid their dues. He and I clashed about schedules and assignments and just about everything else.
Then one day, I wasn’t sure why I was doing it, but I started listening to him instead of cutting him off. We compromised. I found ways to give him some of those assignments—and our customers and I loved the results.
After about a year, we both left the bureau—he to enter an advanced degree program with his bride, me to take a promotion I was hopelessly unprepared to handle. Decades later, our paths crossed here in Washington. We have lunch every once in a while, and one day, he asked if I remembered when our working relationship changed. I said of course, and that I’d never been sure what had happened.
He smiled and told me the story. A strong charismatic evangelical, he had become so frustrated that he called a nationwide prayer line and told the woman on the other end of the phone about the situation. “She prayed with me that I might find favor with you,” he said. “We didn’t pray that I get to cover sports or that I work the day shift or that I have Christmas off. We prayed that I and my work might find favor with you.”
Some of us (my ex used to call me “Supercop of the World”) can find it much easier to sacrifice dignity and respect to continue doing things our way rather than to listen when God shares His plan for us. We wonder at Mary’s faith, the way she accepted the angel’s word of what was coming for her. She didn’t say, “No thanks” or “This isn’t the way I want to do things.”
She asked a question, then said yes. May we do the same.
Action
Meditate on where in your life you are resisting God’s will. Pray for the strength to embrace it.
