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October 21
Utter abandonment
Luke 1:26-38
"... Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word ..." (v.38, NKJV)
Those who know peace are those who know how to rejoice in the divine will. It is the attitude of Mary who, in our text today, says: "Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word."One great writer, Francis de Sales, puts it this way: "To rejoice in God's will suggests mobility -- the mobility of a voyager who moves with the motion of the vessel on which he has embarked. It suggests also the abandonment of a servant in attendance on his lord, going only where his master goes. It is the attitude of a child leaving to his mother the care of willing, choosing and acting for him, content to be in her safe and tender keeping." The biographer of Sadhu Sundar Singh, the great Indian Christian, says: "Realize that, to the Sadhu as to Paul, partnership with Christ was a passion and a privilege that transformed hardship, labor and loss from something which was to be accepted negatively as an unfortunate necessity into something positively welcomed for His sake -- and you will understand a little of the secret of the Sadhu's peace."Our Lord, of course, is once again the supreme example of this. As Robert Nicoll puts it: "He did not merely accept the will of God when it was brought to Him and laid upon Him. Rather, He went out to meet that loving will and fell upon its neck and kissed it." Saints down the ages have illustrated through their lives the quality of this ripened peace. Oh, that we, His present-day saints, might show it too.
Prayer:
O Father, teach me the art of utter abandonment to Your will. Help me to be like Mary -- not just willing, but enthusiastically willing. I ask this for Your own dear Name's sake. Amen.
For Further Study
1. What was the psalmist's prayer?
2. What was the psalmist's response?
