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Good News!

 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” (Luke 1:30-33)

          Good news, Mary! The thing that good Jewish girls hoped and prayed for – that they would give birth to the Messiah – she’d been chosen to do. Exciting…in theory. But what was she to tell Joseph and her parents? Joseph knew he wasn’t the father. By rights, he and her parents, and her neighbors, should have demanded to know who the father was, and then stoned both of them. She was bringing shame and guilt on herself and her family.

          The baby was born away from their home, and after a couple years, they went to Egypt. When they returned to Israel, they went out into the back country, to Nazareth. How far did the story follow them?

          Good news, Mary! But King Herod slaughtered children trying to destroy the one who was born King of the Jews. His son wasn’t likely to be any more accepting of a challenger to his throne. Best to hide, to keep quiet.

          Good news, David! Good news, Abram and Sarai! Good news, Joseph, Moses, Saul, Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, and Saul (Paul)… you’ve all been chosen. Good news, you! Good news, me!  We’ve all been chosen by God, but that doesn’t mean everything will be smooth sailing from now on. Some people have said that being chosen by God means you’re in His army, which means you’re a target.

          There’s a lot of magical thinking going around. If we would only all stay home for two weeks [Poof!] the virus would be gone. If we stayed home for two weeks, not only [Poof!] would the virus be gone, but the environment will have recovered. If a specific candidate is elected, [poof!] Utopia… or at least, [poof!] Utopia if we lock away, “re-educate,” or kill all those nasty folks who don’t like the specific candidate.

          I’m guilty, and I suspect you’re guilty, too. It’s not the specific poof results listed above, necessarily, but when things don’t poof the way I think they should, I tend to think that I got it wrong. It’s not that God has failed, it’s that I have. But what Mary and so many others teach us is that God isn’t poofy. His blessings have often come clothed in hard times and coarse cloth.

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