Infinitum Family Advent, Week 4Egzanp

Have you ever hugged a tree? Or sat on a park bench purposefully to watch some squirrels? What about lying on your back in the grass to study the clouds? Have you ever really listened to the song of a bird? Nature is overflowing with the awesomeness of God. So many parts of nature are silent, yet they “talk” or “sing” about God.

God has never been limited in what He can use to do His work in the world - at one point, He talked about how rocks could come alive to do it if the humans weren’t on board (I wonder if that’s where they got the idea for that Marvel character, Korg?!). The size of God’s imagination makes us realize how small we are (think about you versus the size of the galaxy), and yet God loves loves loves to work with humans as His partners.

Mary (Jesus’ mom) got a pretty big assignment in her partnership with God: raise God’s kid, the Savior of the world. And it’s impressive how much faith and courage she showed in her assignment. But it is also beautiful to see how humble she was, how much she knew that God was doing the big, tough work and that she was just grateful to be part of the project.

Honestly, I don’t know if I would have responded like Mary. And also, I don’t know if I would have chosen Mary for the job if I was God. Would you? We have these ‘rules’ in our head about who’s qualified to do important work or do God’s work, and often those ‘rules’ mean that we rule certain people out. For instance, that guy’s too young to do that thing; or she’s too bossy to lead that project, or they’re too ______ to ________. Am I right? Don’t we have some expectations about who’s ‘right’ or ‘qualified’ to do important things?

Today we’ll read Mary’s thoughts about her important job & we can learn from her a really good way to look at God, ourselves, and the work He wants to do with us. But first, here are a few questions to chew on:

Who are the people you think are most qualified to do God’s work? Why?

Do you have any ‘rules’ about who’s right/qualified to do God’s work that rule YOU out of being His work partner?

What important work do you think God might have for you to do this Christmas?