Day 6: Caring and sharing
Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail” (Luke 1:36-37).
At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-40).
Heavenly Father, Almighty God, the hymnwriter asks the rhetorical question, "Has thou not seen, all that is needful hath been granted in what He [the Lord] ordaineth?"[i].
You alone are God—You alone are sovereign and omnipotent. In ways great and small, You order intricate details and outcomes in unfathomable ways that connect structures, events, and people.
You alone can unfold an amazing, breathtaking, divine plan of cosmic proportions, and in the process attend to every detail in the life of a young virgin in Nazareth and her older relative in the Judean hills. You alone could foreknow their individual needs—support, practical assistance, caring, and sharing—and bring them together in purpose, in anticipation, in expectation, in wonder, and amazement.
Sovereign Lord, You are still the God who directs and sustains the cosmos—the God who calls each star by name (Psalm 147:4), the God whose plan no one dares obscure with words without knowledge (Job 38:2). And You are still the God of our lives—the God who cares about us individually and gives us amazing networks of interdependency and mutual support for our spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional needs.
Thank You for those who walk with us—in laughter and rejoicing, in sadness and mourning, in caring and sharing. Thank You for the ties of blood, of friendship, of common interest. Thank You, O Lord, for the fellowship of kindred minds.
[i] Praise to the Lord, the Almighty ~ Author, Joachim Neander, 1650-80 ~ Translator, Catherine Winkworth, 1827-78
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