What keeps you from giving yourself fully to the Lord?

Some decisions are easier to make than others. Some choices we think about for days, weeks, even years before we make a decision. Mary had to make a decision.

A young woman in her day and age didn’t choose her husband. This was arranged. There was no waiting for your career. Her career was to be the mother of the Messiah. There was no falling in romantic, starry-eyed puppy love.

There was a year from the time the marriage was arranged until the day of the wedding. This is known to us as an engagement, but to Mary and her husband-to-be, it was called a betrothal — a year of commitment to one another, a year of planning, a year of preparation, a year to know one another.

She is alone making this choice. She does it in an instant. The choice she makes is to give herself fully to the Lord and his plans. Mary’s husband-to-be was Joseph. This guy was a carpenter. I can picture him making tables and chairs, building and putting together ladders, all the wooden parts to cover a well, wagon, plow or manger.

He was a man who was in a right relationship with God the Father. He lived his life honoring the Lord in his work, with his friends and the strangers he met. So now he’s caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is doing the right thing without destroying a young woman’s life. The right thing sometimes includes following the rules and being compassionate. This was the problem he faced.

Could he do the right thing? Could he be compassionate? The woman who promised to marry him, to bear his children, to be with him for life, to remain faithful, was pregnant. This was not his child.

He promised to wait until their wedding night. Some men would go to the bar and cry in their beer. Some men would become angry. Some men would become violent. He made the choice to act quietly and divorce her. It was right. It was compassionate.

Mary and Joseph both had a visitor. Mary’s visitor came directly to her. Joseph’s visitor appeared in a dream. Both of them were told the baby was from the work of the Holy Spirit. Both of them were told the baby would be the long-awaited Savior of the world. Both of them agreed to put aside their plans and give themselves fully to the will of the Lord, God Almighty.

What is it that keeps you from giving yourself fully to the Lord?

Joe Sanders

First Baptist Coshocton