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God did a tag-team work when he outlined the story of the Messiah. The book of Luke is the only book of the 4 Gospels to emphasize this tag-team approach.
As we learned earlier, the Christmas story began with Zechariah and Elizabeth conceiving a baby after many barren years. And not just any baby… we are talking about John the Baptist as a baby. The real locust-and-honey-eating, camel-hair-wearing prophet coming into the world as a baby through these two unlikely people.
The role of John the Baptist’s life was to make way for Jesus. To announce his coming. To declare to people that someone great was coming after him and his job was to be the messenger of declaring that good news.
Mary and Elizabeth’s stories will be forever intertwined because of these two sons they were destined to birth just six months apart.
After Mary finds out she is pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit, she immediately rises up and goes to visit Elizabeth.
Without even a mention of what had just happened, Elizabeth knew the prophecy that was unfolding as her six-month baby-to-be leaped in her womb at Mary’s greeting. It’s like Elizabeth had super-divine pregnancy radar and it causes her to start singing at Mary (yes, singing at her), “Why am I so lucky that the mother of my Lord would visit me?”
Let’s pause the story right there and see this sweet, sweet picture.
God uses this moment in the text to bring together the lives of two women who both carried so much purpose– Elizabeth and Mary– for the sheer purpose of celebration.
I think about all the other ways this story could have played out. I think about all the opportunities they had to compete with one another or compare themselves to one another.
They don’t choose comparison or competition– they immediately pick celebration.
This is a lesson for all of us women reading. I am not saying men cannot get the lesson too but it often seems like women have a great capacity to fall into comparison traps and the comparison is usually pitting us against other women.
I’ve struggled with this.
I’ve taken it to God many times before.
I’ve had to learn to hush the thing inside of me that wants to scream out like a child, “But that’s what I wanted!”
I’ve learned this isn’t so much a heart issue as it is a focus issue. When we choose to compare ourselves with other women, we take the focus off of God and what he is up to and we place it back on ourselves. We make ourselves bigger in the process instead of exclaiming the bigness of God.
We cut off the power lines to rejoicing and celebrating when we choose comparison– even if it is just a subtle decision.
I’m here to warn you: those subtle feelings stack up. If we allow them, they will grow to be something so much bigger and it will be that much more difficult to tame the feelings.
So let’s take a page out of Mary and Elizabeth’s book today and let’s remember that we are not in competition with one another.
We are not racing against anyone else’s clock.
We are not being measured or placed in a lineup.
The only competition we have is who we were yesterday.
We can let go of the need to be ahead of others because claiming that position will never get us further. It will only ever hold us back.
The sweetest moments can happen when we choose to embrace celebration wholeheartedly. When we go onto social media and we see a victory for someone else and so we sing out for them, we celebrate them. It might not feel natural at first but, with time, it can become a rhythm in your life that exterminates jealousy and fear, anger, and intimidation.
The world is far too lonely to add another slice of division to the story. Let’s be about one another. Let’s raise our glasses and celebrate what God has done in the stories of one another.
READING
Luke 1:38-56
STEAL THIS PRAYER
Dear God, I am tempted to compare my story to the story of other people and I know that’s not the fullness you have for me. Empower me to choose celebration over comparison throughout this day so I can be a cheerleader for others. Show me the race you have for me and only me to run.
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