One ordinary life....One extraordinary God.

To mark a moment
To celebrate and embrace the past
To move forward into the future with God-confidence
To thank the many astonishing people of my life
To be commissioned and set aside in a public sort of way

On Saturday, January 16, 2010
at a service held at Highview Community Church, Kitchener
at 2:30 p.m.
I am being Ordained.

This is an open invitation to all who would like to celebrate that with me.

Pretending to be Mary

Just the other day my granddaughter Abby came around the corner with her hair a tousled, wondrous mess. Her mother, like most, values tidy hair, and asked Abby how she came to be so unkempt. Abby replied, matter of factly, "I had a blanket on my head." When asked why, she smiled and said, "I was pretending to be Mary."

We've been telling the Christmas story at our house, so it's not at all surprising. After all, every one of the three "Marys" in our three different play set nativities all have the traditional, ancient near eastern head covering for the figure representing the Mother of Christ. So if Abby were to engage in imaginative play, enacting the story for herself, it follows that she would try to imitate Mary with a blanket on her head.

I suppose it's not all that surprising, either, that she would choose Mary as her point of identification. Her own Mommy is the "centre of all things", typical for a three year old, and Mary is the Mommy. And a baby was born at her house not all that long ago, and Mary is the one having the baby. If you string together all the three year old logic, a blanket on your head makes perfect sense.

Now, I haven't been three in oh, 49 years, but still, I think in a way, around this time of year, I tend to walk around in my own head sort of "pretending to be Mary." I do. If I re-enact the story and try to bend my brain around her place in it all, it gives me lots to play with in my soul. Play with, ponder, meditate, wonder at.

That statement holds me every time I read it.

"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." (Luke 1:38)

Go ahead God, with preposterous thing You've just told me. This idea You've got that I would carry Your Son, Your very Self inside of me. Go ahead and change everything I had planned. All my dreams and thoughts about my own life. Take me, my body, my promised marriage, my future, my entire life. It's all Yours. Because I am Your servant.

Yes, she said that!

As someone who has come to understand how desperately I need Jesus, I am speechless with gratitude that Mary said it. That Mary did it. That Mary laid aside everything of herself to bring Jesus to me. What a warrior woman you were!

I want to pretend to be Mary. To say what she said and be willing to give everything over. To relinquish it all, all of it, so God can do what He's got in mind through me, if He should choose. I want to pretend to be Mary.

It's remarkable really, that such a young girl would be given this preposterous responsibility - to bring the Saviour to the world. In my pretending, in my identification meditations, I'm sure she did not feel at all up to it. "How can this be?" she asks, confused. "Who, me?"

I ask it too. How could I, even if I'm willing, possibly be up to the task? In my own way, in my own life, if I'm to bring Jesus to others, I am so not up for it.

I get tired. I get cranky. I get selfish. I let the worries get the better of me. I fail to trust, I fail to rest, I fail to love. I overbook my life and leave little room for those I love to enter into my heart-space without feeling like an unwelcome intruder midst all the things I have to "do".

Bring the love and life of Jesus to the world? Who, me?

But it's not me really. Not at all. "The power of the Most High with overshadow you," the angel said. Overshadow. That means "be more than", "eclipse", "take it far further than you ever could." That's what the power of the Most High can do.

So I pretend. I pretend to be Mary and offer myself, as tired and cranky and selfish and worried and driven and loveless as I tend to be at times. I pretend to be Mary, as small and helpless as I feel most of the time. I pretend to be Mary, and ask God to overshadow me in any meager attempt to offer Christ to my world.

Go ahead God, with preposterous thing You've just told me. This idea You've got that I would carry Your Son, Your very Self inside of me. Go ahead and change everything I had planned. All my dreams and thoughts about my own life. Take me, my body, my promised family, my future, my entire life. It's all Yours.

Because I am Your servant.

I'm just here, with a blanket on my head.....pretending.

An Open Christmas Letter to Highview Community Church

December 10, 2009

Dear Friends who are Family,

A winter sunrise is a spectacular gift.

Over a cold, sepia horizon, comes a silent explosion of colour, screaming a defiant warmth across the brittle sky. A new dawn. A new day. A new promise into which God's new-every-morning mercies can pour away the darkness of our complicated and messy ways of being human.

That first new morning after that unbelievable night in the stable, I imagine the sunrise over Bethlehem was like that; defiant and merciful. The eternal plans of a God of covenantal connection were in full swing. The sky screamed it. The earth received it. The universe vibrated with it.

From now on, no matter how complicated and messy it got, the darkness couldn't win. God wins. Jesus is here. Everything is new. A new dawn. A new day. A new promise into which God's unspeakable mercy and grace can pour into the hearts of humanity; all who would seize it.

It is truly humbling to be part of the vibrating gathering of humanity that calls itself Highview; to journey with you, to get tired with you, to serve in the intensity of the battle with you, to laugh and rest with you, to love you. To watch you, collectively and as individuals, allow God to press and direct and change and transform. To be given the great gift of your companionship and support through personal losses, challenges, opportunities and celebrations. You are like a winter sunrise to me -- a truly spectacular gift of grace and hope and promise.

As we head into a future of hopeful change and untapped potential -- particularly as it pertains to the expansion of this physical property God has entrusted to us, and all the ways that connects with our vision going forward -- I hope you know first that I love you, and second that I totally believe in you. Honestly, my heart can hardly hold how much I am grateful for you all. And I am fully convinced that God has given us everything we need to succeed in the Five Year Plan as He directs...all the way!!! We have astonishing things ahead for us.

On behalf of Ken and myself, I want to wish you a hushed and holy Christmas season, and a year full of the defiant mercy of a God who can take you all the way.

Ever Grateful,

Ruth Anne