Musings on Marriage

Tag: Mary

Mary’s Middle Voice

Dear Daughters,

Have you ever pondered how it must have felt to be Mary when the angel came to her announcing that she was chosen to be the mother of the Jewish Messiah?  Her response to the angel Gabriel was quite amazing. 

In the book Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools, Tyler Staton includes an enlightening chapter about Mary’s prayer when the angel visited her.

Most prayers we pray are able to fit into one of three categories.

1 – Active prayer: a prayer trying to get God to adopt our will.  There is a presumption that if we can crack the code or say the right words in the right order with the right amount of emotion – then He will hopefully become our cosmic genie.

2 – Passive prayer: trying to let God be, and let ourselves simply be.  We aren’t asking for anything and may be emptying ourselves of any desire to ask. 

But neither of these prayers are what God desires.  We can see the most remarkable prayer – what Eugene Peterson calls the Middle Voice – in Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel centuries ago.

Mary was a young teenage girl engaged to be married, probably counting down the weeks until the wedding.  She may have had a fairy-tale expectation for her upcoming marriage, as many young women do. She may have imagined how wonderful it will be to build a home with her future husband, Joseph.

 And then she is visited by Gabriel, announcing that she, a virgin, is carrying a child.  The Spirit of God has caused her to conceive and God Himself is the father.

For her whole life Mary had heard about the coming Messiah through the many prophets, wondering along with everyone else when He would arrive.  So, I’m sure she was amazed that God had finally chosen this time – her time – to send His child, and the fact that she would be the mother of the Messiah, playing an important part in the supporting cast of this amazing, centuries-long prophesied story. 

On the other hand, there are the devastating practicalities to go along with it.  Mary would have to tell Joseph she was pregnant with another’s child, and the father’s name is the Alpha and the Omega.  She knew she would have to endure the social stigma going along with her being pregnant before she was married.  How many people of her village would believe she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit? Would her family disown her?  Would Joseph believe these wild-sounding words?

With all these thoughts most likely racing through her mind she responds simply,

I am the Lord’s servant.

Let it be with me just as you say.

Mary’s prayer was one of total surrender and participation.  This prayer is the Middle Voice, in which God delights greatly.  It’s not pressing God for what she wants, and it’s not being passive – floating along life with no specific desires at all. 

When we pray in the Middle Voice, we are willing to participate in God’s plan.  It is the declaration that He is God and we are not, an acknowledgement of our place in the created order.  He is the author of our story, and we each have an important supporting role to play in this story.  Our fulfillment is walking in His plan, going where He says to go and doing what He says to do.  There is no greater joy than this.

The Middle Voice reminds me of the mighty Snake River in the West.  In my younger days I have tried to swim against the current, but it only brought me frustration and weariness.  I was not strong enough and it seemed like an exercise in futility.  When we continually try to create our own story and deny His, we can never truly rest because always anxiety and exhaustion are always hovering.

Yet when I swim in the direction of the current which is always moving, I am not anxious, but instead receive resilience.  I am moving along with God’s power and have become a part of His story so I don’t need to manufacture one of my own.  Walking in step with the Spirit brings freedom and joy like nothing else.  Yes, there will be challenges when we accept God’s call on our life, but we’ll never walk alone.  I agree with Tyler as he writes:

I want that too.  I want what I see in Mary.  I want to cooperate with God’s redemptive work in this broken world.  I want to swim with the current, speeding along effortlessly, paddling my arms and kicking my legs, but propelled on by a stronger current too.  I want to cooperate with God’s work in me, inviting His formation of my desires, thoughts, emotions and actions, all of them hopelessly disordered by the fallen image of which I am a part.  I want the Spirit of God to rework me from within, like an expert mechanic to a classic car, getting me running according to design. 

Accepting God’s will for our lives, also known as surrendering, means giving up control of our lives, but when we give control to our Creator, who knows us best and loves us more than anyone on earth, it’s got to be a good choice.

Love, Mom

The Chosen

Dear Daughters,

Several years ago a friend of mine posted a new TV series called The Chosen.  Again and again I would see his posts, commenting on how much he enjoyed it and encouraging others to watch.  I remember thinking to myself, I’ve seen several Jesus/Bible movies and have never been impressed with them.  Most of the characters looked like Americans, Jesus was always white and handsome, the plot lines seemed anemic and the dialogue stilted.  The Jesus in the movies never seemed real to me; he seemed other-worldly, not at all connected to his humanity.

So I never looked into it – until a month ago.  Recently, because another friend of mine was so enthusiastic about how she loved the series and had watched some episodes several times, I finally decided to give Season 1, Episode 1 a try.  It was titled

I Have Called You By Name. 

Completely different from any movie I’ve ever seen about Jesus, it opens with Mary Magdalene as a little girl, then as an adult wrestling with her demons.  It shows the every-day oppression of living under the Roman occupation, the hierarchy of the Jewish religious system, and the day to day grind of being a fisherman. 

As with any good movie, I had a lot of questions and wonderings about different scenes so of course I had to watch it again.  But the most amazing thing for me is the character of Jesus and how his humanity is portrayed – how he loves people in the red quarter, how he carves toys for the little children, how he celebrates with joy and dancing at the wedding feast of his friends.  The honesty and vulnerability of Jesus is refreshing.  He is not intimidated by the religious folk, the poor, the cynical or the Romans. 

On the other hand, the disciples are depicted as the self-centered, hard-to-get-along-with people they were.  Seeing the backstories of the characters helped me to see them as actual human beings who were deeply flawed, argumentative and obviously misunderstanding the entire mission of Jesus.  The apparent animosity between Peter the fisherman and Matthew who ruthlessly collected his taxes, was shown for what it was.  And yet, Jesus called them both to follow Him.  There were spats among the disciples – who was the greatest of them and arguments about how the whole traveling troupe should be managed.  There were biases toward classes of people and speculation about ideologies, mistrust of each other and definite opinions about life in general.  Peter, the guy who seemed the most opinionated of all, constantly gave Jesus helpful hints about how the ministry should be run.

I had never thought about Jesus continually traveling, setting up camp each night, preparing food, walking miles of dusty roads and constantly facing multitudes of people seeking healing, facing intense criticism from the religious folk and being entirely misinterpreted day after day by everyone around Him.

The official statement about the series: 

The Chosen is based on the true stories of the gospels of Jesus Christ.  Some locations and timelines have been combined or condensed.  Backstories and some characters and dialogue have been added.  However, all Biblical and Historical context and any artistic imagination are designed to support the truth and intention of the Scriptures.  The original names, locations and phrases have been transliterated into English for anything spoken.

The Chosen gets two thumbs up from me, and a huge thank you to my persistent friends for challenging me to watch the show.

Love, Mom

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