Day 1 – Mary’s Submission
January 5, 2024
By Bishop Bryan Hoke, Atlantic Conference
Scripture meditation: Luke 1:26-38
The mission of Jesus is expansive. It’s like an echo that keeps reverberating out until it has filled every nook and cranny it encounters. It encapsulates our neighbor across the street, the stranger in line ahead of us in the store, and our siblings in every corner of the globe. It is more grand than we can comprehend and yet one of the earliest steps to being a part of that mission transpires through the simple act of submission.
Mary was young, perplexed, scared, troubled, and anything but grand. Yet when God made clear what he was asking of her, she responds with submission. I humbly place what you desire ahead of what I desire. Or in her own words, “I am the Lord’s servant…May your word to me be fulfilled.”
Mary’s willingness to yield her plans and desires – her whole self! – to God literally brought into the world God’s “salvation…a light for revelation to the Gentiles and glory of (his) people, Israel,” (Luke 2:32). That set into motion the greatest act of redemption and reconciliation the world has ever known. Her submission launched what prophets who came before her long foretold, the mission God had in mind all along: to bring all people to himself.
What began with Mary yielding her life to the mission and desires of God echoed years later through the one who was birthed as he replicated that posture, saying, “Not as I will, but as you will.” Jesus’ submission is how the mission of God would be accomplished.
Here we are all these years later. The mission hasn’t changed, and the starting place for how we embrace that mission is identical. Will Mary’s submission echo through our lives into the places and spaces where God has planted us? Will his mission of redemption and reconciliation come about to those around us through our response to him? Am I willing to place my will under the will of God and exclaim with Mary, “May your word to me be fulfilled?”
Prayer
Father, I pray that I will have a yielded heart, so that your will may be fulfilled. Bring about your mission in and through me as I submit my whole self to you. Amen.