Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 20, 2005

What a won­der­ful time of year. Advent. The com­ing. A sea­son of joy and antic­i­pa­tion. I love this time of year. And I love today’s scrip­tures. Isaiah’s pre­dic­tion of the vir­gin who shall con­ceive and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel. The psalmist pro­claims, let the Lord enter; he is the king of glo­ry. And Luke tells of the angel Gabriel’s mes­sage for Mary and Mary’s reaction.

For me, Mary’s sto­ry is a won­der­ful sto­ry. It is a sto­ry about the leap of faith. And Mary is the mod­el of faith and obe­di­ence. I’ve often won­dered, how I would react if I were vis­it­ed by an angel. The angel Gabriel says to Mary, “Do not be afraid.” I think that would be my first clue that I prob­a­bly should be afraid. Then the angel tells Mary that she is going to con­ceive and bear a son and name him Jesus. And Mary asks, “How can this be?” I’ve always found it encour­ag­ing that even Mary had doubts and ques­tions. And the angel explains that the Holy Spir­it will come upon Mary and the child she bears will be called the Son of God. This is where I would be check­ing the out date on the milk car­ton to see if I was suf­fer­ing from mold-induced hal­lu­ci­na­tions. Instead Mary makes the incred­i­ble state­ment, “Behold, I am the hand­maid of the Lord. May it be done to me accord­ing to your word.” Mary makes the leap of faith.

For many, this is where our leap of faith comes in. Many have a hard time believ­ing the sto­ry of Mary. A vir­gin moth­er? It is a stum­bling block to many. It flies in the face of every­thing we know about this world. For me it is a leap of faith, but not a big one. Either God is God or he isn’t. For me, the cre­ator of the uni­verse should have lit­tle trou­ble cre­at­ing a vir­gin mother.

I recent­ly had an expe­ri­ence with a lit­er­al leap of faith. Most every­one who is a par­ent or who has been around small chil­dren has put a tod­dler on a fence, a wall or the side of the pool and then told the child to jump into their arms. I’ve been doing this for years with my chil­dren. I’ve had a few near miss­es when I wasn’t ready or I wasn’t pay­ing atten­tion, but I have a pret­ty good record for catch­ing chil­dren. Recent­ly, my youngest son, now in first grade, was sit­ting atop some play­ground equip­ment and hav­ing trou­ble get­ting down. I told him to jump into my arms. Seth start­ed to jump and then hes­i­tat­ed. I became impa­tient and said, “Just jump.” Seth looked at me and said, “But dad, you’re small­er now.” I had to laugh. The real­i­ty is that I’m big­ger now (where do those pounds come from?). How­ev­er, my son’s view of me had changed.

Christ is the same yes­ter­day, today and for­ev­er. Yet, some­times as we grow old­er, our view changes. We don’t trust. We lose our faith. We are too mature or too sophis­ti­cat­ed or too intel­li­gent. We become cyn­i­cal. We think we don’t need God. How sad. We for­feit our joy for a false, short lived, world­ly hap­pi­ness. I love the image of Christ wait­ing for us with lov­ing, out­stretched arms. Telling us to just jump. My prayer is that the joy of this Advent sea­son is not lost in all the busy hus­tle and bus­tle. That we would make the leap of faith and embrace our lov­ing Sav­ior. That we would not let this glo­ri­ous time and oppor­tu­ni­ty we have before us slip by. Oh, and, by the by, my son did jump.