What Are You Getting for Christmas?
Isaiah 64:1-3 1Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! 2As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you! 3For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
Exodus 33:18-20 18Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." 19And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live. "
Luke 1:46-55 46And Mary said: "My soul glorifies the Lord 47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, 49for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. 50His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. 51He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 52He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. 53He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 54He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers."
Like the prophet Isaiah sometimes we want to cry out to God, “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down. Show them. Show our oppressors that You are for real. Show them Your power to destroy and to deliver. Show them for sure, so that there can be no doubt in their mind, and cause the nations to quake before You.” We might imagine that under the prophet’s cry came the whisper, “And by the way, Lord, would You show me, too?”
We long for certainty that God is real, that He is sovereign, that He cares for us, has a purpose for us, and that He has the power to give us life beyond the grave. But certainty is something we cannot have, at least not the kind we so often seek. Even Moses was denied the certainty he sought. “Now show me Your glory,” Moses asks. And God answers, “you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.” And among the Psalmist this denial of certainty was a common complaint, as in Psalm 89:46a, “How long, O LORD ? Will you hide yourself forever?”
We are told this lack of certainty is good for us. It guards us against pride and complacency. It moves us to keep on keeping on, following after God to learn more about Him and His will for our life and our world. Certainty of the complete kind is simply something we cannot have.
What we can have is conviction. Certainty is something we search for. Conviction is something we are given. Certainty demands proof. Conviction requires “the heavenly vision”. Certainty wants to eliminate the element of not knowing. Conviction accepts this not knowing with a sense of wonder and awe.
Few people exhibit conviction more than Mary, the mother of Jesus. Nowhere is the spirit of conviction more evident than in Mary’s response to the announcement of Jesus’ birth. Everything that Isaiah had sought to see, Mary now sees with the eyes of conviction. She sees the proud and haughty brought low in their awareness of God’s power and might. She sees the oppressed and discouraged raised up by God’s power and will. She sees all of this, even though none of these things has yet taken place.
In Mary we see the difference between certainty and conviction. Certainty is something we search for. Conviction is something we are given. Certainty looks for visible proof. Conviction is rooted in the heavenly vision. Certainty wants to eliminate the element of not knowing. Conviction accepts our limitations with a sense of wonder and awe.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell
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