Learning to Surrender in Faith

If I’m honest, I have to admit, Christmas can make me “clutchy,” clutching for control over the chaos—getting all the decorations out and up, all the gifts bought and wrapped, and all the people happy with the holiday plans. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is not what Christmas is supposed to be about. That’s why I love to consider Mary, and the surrender she made in that very first Christmas. Today I share an excerpt from From Recovery to Restoration: 60 Meditations for Finding Peace & Hope in Crisis, that draws us to surrender with Mary. 

Surrender

Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. Luke 1:38, ESV

Many of us in crisis know the sense of being called to die to hopes and dreams we long cherished. Mary, the mother of Jesus, encourages us in this hard place. There is perhaps no agony like the agony a mother feels when her child suffers. Whether the child suffers through their own failings and sin or through the harm inflicted by another, a mother flinches at every punishing blow. Mary was no exception.

Her story begins with a profound expression of faith and hope in the Lord. She is a young girl, possibly fourteen to sixteen years old, when the angel Gabriel appears to her, disrupting her simple life. After encouraging her not to be afraid because she has found favor with the Lord, Gabriel reveals that she will give birth to the Messiah (Luke 1:30-33).

Indeed, Mary has every reason to be afraid. It is no easy task to become the mother of the Messiah. The unplanned pregnancy, like many today, would have aroused fear. Would her betrothed, Joseph, abandon her? Would she be left helpless and alone? And yet, Mary surrenders, declaring herself a servant of the Lord and proclaiming, “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

In the years to come, though, Mary will wrestle with her son’s calling. She feels deep distress when Jesus, twelve at the time, disappears for three days, and is eventually found sitting with the teachers in the temple (Luke 2:48). Many years later, she attempts, along with Jesus’ brothers, to call him away from ministering to the crowds. On that day, she hears Jesus’ heart-shearing message, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” (Matthew 12:48). Yes, Mary suffered.

Whatever you have felt in your season of crisis—confusion, doubt, distress—Mary felt it too. Despite her earliest words of surrender, she eventually realized that mothering the Messiah meant standing by helplessly as he went about saving the world according to his plan, not hers. If she were to continue to follow Jesus, Mary had to decide—would she yield control of her life (and his) to her Savior, God’s Son, the Messiah? Would she follow Jesus to the foot of the cross? In crisis, we face the same decision.

Mary does decide to follow Jesus to the foot of the cross. We find her standing beneath him as his body, bloodied and beaten, hangs, dying. As unbearable as this moment must have been for Mary, she is there. In her presence there and in her presence with the disciples in the coming days and years, we see her surrender to Jesus, her settled acceptance of his way of salvation.

Crisis and recovery compel us to consider: will we trust Jesus even when his way feels like death? Mary’s surrender draws us to hope that there is life beyond the cross. There is resurrection. There is restoration. May we dare to believe that in our moment of misery, there can be everlasting joy.

Prayer

Lord Jesus,

Help us to surrender to your loving way even when it feels like death. Give us glimpses of your joy even in our sorrows.

In your resurrected name. Amen.

Further Encouragement

Read Luke 1:26-38; Luke 2:41-52; John 19:25-27.

Listen to “Be Born in Me” by Francesca Battistelli.

For Reflection

What would it look like for you to surrender to Jesus in this season?