dar334

You certainly don’t have to be a theologian to know who Mary is.  I’m not talking about the Mary you went to school with, or your Aunt Mary, I’m talking about the mother of our Messiah.  That Mary.  The Mary.

Last night as I was sitting at the kitchen table working on the “Discerning the Voice of God” lesson, Ms. Shirer advised us not to ignore a thought that comes to us out of left field.  We are to check inward to see if the Holy Spirit is encouraging us to pursue it.  She proposes that if Holy Spirit brings conviction that will not let us rest until we move forward, then we know it’s God.  Perhaps to better understand the Holy Spirit bringing conviction, I will add to this train of thought, we could look at it as a “gut feeling”.  We’ve all had “gut feelings”, and we’ve all heard that our gut feelings are more often than not “right on”.  And unfortunately, we’ve all had our snouts slapped by not following our “gut feeling.”  Again, I will remind you, I don’t believe in coincidences.

Ms. Shirer gave us these examples of things that came from God, “out of left field”, from our Instruction Book:

• Noah was asked to build an ark for surviving a flood one hundred and twenty years away.
• Abraham was asked to leave his home for an unknown country.
• Samuel was asked to give a tough message to his mentor, Eli.
• Esther was asked to plead the case for her people before a king.
• Mary was asked to become the mother of the Messiah.

It was at this point I stopped and glanced out the window while thinking about Mary.  I thought about my seventeen studies in the last five or six years which have all obviously touched on Jesus and his mother, where had I read that she knew there was going to be a Messiah?  (Now I have a “gut feeling” that the majority of you just thought “seriously dar?  Have you NOT been paying attention?”  To which I will remind you that I am self-labeled “mildly retarded.”  And I own that.)

Now back to my story.  My daughter and I often joke about God controlling the happenings down here like we are living in SimCity.  We will mention someone right out of the blue and within a day or two we will see that person.  There rarely is a logically explanation for this happening, and again I remind you I don’t believe in coincidences, at which point we picture God picking up that person with his cursor and moving him or her right into our path.  (Like putting Phil in Frank’s.)  This morning when I sat down at the kitchen table to read my daily scripture, Micah 1-7, in the introduction I read:

– But even in the midst of judgment, God promises to deliver the small minority who have continued to follow him.  He states, “Your king will lead you; the Lord himself will guide you”  The king, of course, is Jesus; and we read in 5:2 that he will be born as a baby in Bethlehem, an obscure Judean village. –

Of course Mary knew there would be a Messiah born.  Why had I even stopped to think about that last night?  And then it dawned on me.  I was literally “Discerning the Voice of God”.  He doesn’t pick the people up with his cursor and deposit them in our path, he knows ahead of time that they will be in our path so HE CAUSES US TO THINK OF THEM  so when we see them we know it was truly a “God Wink”, a “God-incidence”.

In closing, while my mind was going much faster than my fingers can type, in that jumbled mess going through my head, I thought about the times I’ve reached out to others to join us in our studies.  I want them to experience for themselves what these last few years of  losing myself in God’s Word has gotten me through.  Even though I had a detour last night when I thought about Mary, and a detour this morning to put my thoughts on paper, I wasn’t thinking about ……. thanks to Alan Jackson …… “Who’s cheatin’ who, who’s being true, who don’t even care anymore.  It makes you wonder who’s doing right with someone tonight, who’s car is parked next door?”

I will continue to plant seeds, and I will continue to pray for those that “get lost” in unhealthy trains of thought.  The one thing so many continue to forget, or haven’t truly heard yet, is that the only one you should be trying to please is God, and I don’t think God would be pleased by us continuing to “pick at the scab” left by a hurt.  Leave it alone.  Let it heal.  Move on.  It’s temporary.

Thank you Priscilla,

-dar