When She Said Yes

"I am the Lord's servant," 

Mary answered.

"May it be to me as you have said."

Luke 1:38

These just might be the most pivotal words ever spoken.

I risk exaggeration or over simplification, 

but it's hard for me to unhook my heart from this consideration.   

A maiden unassuming,

with a wedding looming, 

says "yes" to what she knows is impossible 

and cosmic 

and all-consuming. 

And in so doing 

brings about the rescue of humanity 

from insanity.

She.  Says.  Yes.

And I pause in the mess of my own ego-grasping,

gasping at the enormity of her conformity to the plan of God.

She bears the One,

the Son,

and the whole of the created universe

is changed forever,

severed from a destiny of self-destruction

by the self-deflection of one surrendered heart.

And this is how God chooses to bring redemption.

Through human suspension of self-will.

She.  Says.  Yes.

Pivotal.

My yes seems less.

Unless....

What if God still does this?

What if Jesus is carried and delivered

by unshivered hearts that still declare the yes

even now, in this mess?

What if yes is God's conduit of grace,

somehow vibrating through my face to 

bring the Redemption

to a world that still so badly needs Him?

My yes seems less unless

there's a pivotal yes for me to say

today

to bring and sing the same song of abandon Mary sang

Somehow

To be that broken and unspoken jar of clay;
a way of shalom
of redemption
of bigger things than my own assumptions
Here and now
To say
Yes
And watch with wonder
What He'll do with it.