Well I don’t know about you, but in more normal years as I write my article for the Christmas magazine, my diary is full to the gunnels of things to do, places to go and people to see. The first 3 weeks of December are usually a squash of Christmas assemblies, carol services, Christmas fairs, visits to residential homes, Christmas lunches and other meals, parties, family events and lots of other interesting and exciting festive things – all planned months in advance and strategically added to fit in a much as possible. But this December is different – no parties, no assemblies, no fairs, no visits and even the likelihood of a carol service in church being doubtful.
More than that though, it’s not even possible to really make any plans at all – who knows if tier restrictions will change, another Lockdown appear and there is a risk that we can’t put those plans into practise. It can be annoying when our plans have to change and when what we hope will happen doesn’t do so.
It’s made me think this year about Mary and what her plans might have been before God chose her to be the mother of his own Son and all those plans she had been making were turned on their head? She was, of course, already engaged to Joseph. Presumably she had been planning a happy but probably unremarkable life in Nazareth, with her carpenter husband and collection of children?
All those plans were changed the day she met the Angel Gabriel and had God’s new plan for her life revealed to her. When the angel explained to her what God was asking her to do and how in achieving it she, and we, would see that nothing is impossible for God, Mary’s response was, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” (Luke 1:38)
This passage can be inspiring to us too – perhaps even more so at the current time. Her total trust in God to lead her into a good future, one of his design, is astounding and an example we would do well to follow.
So my prayer for all of us this Christmas is that we won’t focus on what we can’t do, the plans we have made but can’t put into practise, the changes and challenges that we face, but instead we will remember that God has plans for us that might be even more amazing than the ones we can think of for ourselves.
In Jeremiah 29:11 we read, “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Let’s take that knowledge forward into this festive period, however it plays out, and give thanks to God for his gift to all of us in the birth of that baby in Bethlehem, Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Catherine Booton