At the end of the year, as December draws to a close, I usually find myself battling weariness and fighting off disappointment or despair. I often berate myself for not finishing the year like I wanted or hoped to.

In my disappointment, I realize that prideful hope has been an unwelcome but frequent visitor; I’ve hoped that my name would be made great; I’ve hoped that my projects would finish well; I’ve hoped that all of my boxes would be checked, all of my ducks in a row, all of my finish lines crossed and all of my plans fulfilled. But when does anyone’s year ever end like that? When do all of our well-made plans, even prayed-over plans, play out exactly like we hoped or thought?

When life doesn’t end or the year doesn’t finish like we thought it would, we discover what we’ve really been hoping in – a successful year, a successful life, and a successful self. Our “hope” shows itself for what it really is: an idol dressed up in sheep’s clothing relying on our own strength instead of God’s.

But on parallel tracks beside my own vain disappointment and shallow soul are the words to Mary’s Song and the great reversal wrought by God’s grace where weak become strong, impoverished become rich, and humble became great (see last week’s blog). Mary’s refusal to define her success by the standards of this world continues to challenge and undo me. For when Gabriel showed up to announce the good news and favor of God in her life, everything she most certainly held sacred began to unravel.

A clean, buttoned-up reputation as a virgin? Blown to smithereens. A fairy-tale wedding? Gone, her too tight belly unable to fit in a wedding dress. Her hopes for a normal family life that looked like everyone else’s? Burned up in the fire of God’s favor and fervency of His loyal love. If Mary had evaluated her year in the light of her community’s standards or even her own instead of God’s, everything would have looked like strange ashes instead of goodness and grace.

But God’s favor in our lives often looks like that. It looks like death instead of life as He asks us to trade our vision of a successful or prosperous future for unforeseen pain or unfulfilled plans. It looks like taking Plan Z instead of Plan A and plunging directly off of any map for our lives we ever envisioned.

But what’s the alternative? We either let God wreck our well-wrought plans and take us on a journey that requires soul-shaking submission and extraordinary faith, or we stay dissatisfied in a life that feels far too normal, predictable, and ordinary.

As I’ve pondered Mary and all of her risk-taking trust, I’ve thought about King Herod too. When the wise men came to announce the coming of a new king, instead of bowing down, he panics. Instead of worshipping and allowing God to wreck his world, he rages and becomes a wrecking ball himself (Matthew 2:1-18).

But isn’t that always how it is? We don’t really have any other option. We either rage against God’s rule and reign in our lives, or we worship (see Psalm 2:10-12). We bow and submit, or we rear our ugly heads and destroy the lives of the people around us, our own included.

In my most honest moments, I have to admit I am way like Herod than Mary. I am more enthralled with the ways of the world and the power of the world and advancement in the world than with obedient submission and loyal love to God.

God wrecked Mary’s world in order to rebuild it, and in doing so, He rebuilt our world as well.

Herod stood to have his world wrecked, but instead of bowing, he went on a blitzkrieg and blasted babies to ruin, ripped apart families, and pierced mothers’ souls.

Those are the two alternatives, the two choices before us this year and every year hereafter. We are wrecked and rebuilt, or we refuse to be wrecked by the Christ-Child, the Servant-King, and we become a wrecking ball ourselves. We huff and puff and detonate and blow only to perish in nothingness in the end. But when we are wrecked for the sake of another, when we surrender to the dying and disappointment and our plans are buried in the ground – our names, our reputations, our hopes and dreams of the good life – we bloom. We flourish and grow in the light and life of the One who came and is coming again. It might take weeks, months, years, even centuries, and it might be something only our grandchildren or even great-grandchildren see, but all that is wrecked by God, surrendered to God, and left in His Hands will roar to life once again.

So, as we look to the end of the year and evaluate how things stand, how we thought things would stand, and what we thought the end would be, can I be so bold to say, Let the wreckage come. Let the devastation be wrought. Let disillusionment be stripped away of what we thought would occur happen so that what is lasting will remain. Let us be like Mary who willingly submitted and who did not rage but bowed.

This is the story of the Annunciation, the Incarnation, the Magnificat, and the journey to Bethlehem. This is the plot line of the song of Zechariah, the song of Mary, the announcement of the angels, the joy of the shepherds, and the worship of the wise men – all that we thought was great, mighty, powerful, influential, or worthy of worship in the world withers in the weakness of God in the flesh, majesty in a womb, might bound in swaddling cloths, eternity held in a mother’s arms, laid in a manger.

How can we ever doubt that this same God who became nothing so that we could be remade into something beautiful would ever drop our plans in forgetfulness or subvert our hopes in meanness? He is not like that. He is not like you, me, your most formidable enemy or even your dearest friend. He is better, kinder, more gracious, more loving, more truthful and faithful than you and I could ever dare to imagine or believe.

He doesn’t shame us with all the leftover bits of our year; He brings them to Himself, blesses them, and reminds us whatever is given into His humble, fruitful hands will grow into a garden.

Our job, like Mary, is to receive, to submit, to trust, to hope, to watch, to wait, and to worship, for at the end of the year, just as at the beginning, we serve a faithful, gracious King.

And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
Luke 1:35-38