For Advent.
Excerpts from “Annunciation”
from Honest Advent, by Scott Erickson.
“I presume most of us would invite a divine annunciation [like Mary had]. To have some otherworldly being deliver a message from the Almighty sounds like everything we’ve been hoping for.
How often do we anguish over life’s decisions and direction, and how incredible would it be to receive a definitive answer from the Lord of Lords!
…It would be awesome to have this kind of story in your life. But if I’m honest, I’m actually afraid of revelation. All great stories come at a cost, and the cost of revelation is that it’s going to ask something of us. In any divine annunciation, you receive revelation as a gift, yet at the same time you receive notice that all that you had planned is ending. It’s all over. Everything will change–most of all you.
Revelation is a hard gift to receive. You must give up everything else to receive it–like finding a treasure in a field and selling everything you have so you can get that treasure.
But then again, she who is willing to accept the cost of revelation finds herself in the deepest of stories. Stories that are so mysterious, divine, and human that we still tell them today.
May you receive the light of divine annunciation in the flames of your best laid plans.”