Day 51 - Issue 23
Luke 1:38 NLT
Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her.
Trust is an amazing gift to present to anyone. When Katey and I got married it was enthusiastically but with little real knowledge of what marriage actually meant. I was marrying the girl of my dreams, while assuming I’d continue to live my life the way I always had. I failed to recognise that Katey was a fully formed personality in her own right. So it wasn’t long before the fireworks began to fly. We needed the encouragement and help of good friends to help us adjust and lay foundations that might ensure a long, stable and enriching marriage.
It disappoints me when I hear some of the language used as people describe their marriages. They speak of deals, as if relationship is transactional, or keep secrets from each other. I am no judge; however, for me to discover my spouse kept secrets from me would be devastating. It is also a good discipline in times of prayer together to share the very worst of myself, knowing I can trust this to my wife and still be loved.
Mary is confronted by an angel and invited to entrust her life entirely into the hands of God. She questions, naturally, yet chose to set those questions to one side and respond to God. As I ponder on this story, it highlights how slow I am to entrust myself to God beyond the questions I carry. The journey with MS and now Jayne’s chronic pain condition present some difficult questions that I haven’t any answers to. Do I continue to trust God with my and my family’s welfare? Or do I establish a number of parallel, alternative strategies to compensate when God fails to show? Trust triumphs through personal choice.
QUESTION: What choices have you delayed, or built alternative strategies for, just in case God fails to show?
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, trusting can be hard, yet I would trust you with all of my heart.
