Goals

 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)

 

          Today’s passage from Biblegateway.com is part of the Christmas story, which makes it appropriate for December 16, but it also teaches a lesson about goals. Girls today may dream in terms of having a child who grows up to be a rock-star (in whatever field the child chooses,) girls of the tribe of Judah back in Mary’s daydreamed of being the mother of the Messiah. Like most dreams, it seems to have lacked the harshness of reality. Virgins can’t be pregnant, and surely the God who forbade extra-marital sex would not …could not… how could this be?

And yet, the angel tells Mary not to be afraid, that she has found favor with God. Favor? What she could expect was to be divorced (at the time, betrothals ended with either marriage or divorce. It was a pre-marriage marriage with all of the responsibilities but none of the benefits.) What she could expect is for her family to stone her and to take sacrifices to Jerusalem for their guilt in the matter – sacrifices they probably couldn’t afford.

Fast-forward to us. Our situations may not have the same social repercussions or the same ramifications in history. We’re giving birth to goals, not Messiahs. At the same time, twenty-seven generations came and went between David and Mary that were no less the line of the Messiah than Mary. Other people were involved in the lives of those folks, without whom the line might have been broken. You and I may have what seems to us to be insignificant roles and unsubstantial influence in what happens, but that tiny link that we ignore may be critical to the plan. We don’t generally get to know these things. It’s the Butterfly Effect that we can’t understand but can’t disprove.

The problem with goals is that the better ones aren’t comfortable or easy. There’s risk involved. Sometimes, as with Mary, physical life and limb are involved, and even the survivors may face a lifetime of difficulty. Sometimes the risk doesn’t involve our physical existence, but that tends to mean that we feel the pain longer. As we set goals, and especially as we set God-sized goals, we should prepare for difficulty and pain, and be happy if it does not come, rather than expecting to skip though daffodils, and discover the way isn’t as easy as we’d hoped.