“Emmanuel, God is with us” by Melanie Blaszczak, Fiat Ventures
If you could go back in time and write your whole life story over again what and who would you include? Would it be relatively the same life or something totally different? Having graduated college I look back on those four years of my life and I wonder about questions like that. What if I never even have gone to college? Would I still be the same person I am today? And the answers to those questions is “probably not.” I would not have had the same experiences or met the very people who inspired and challenged me in college. I am who I am today because of all the experiences I had and that is not all thanks to “fate.” It is from a heavenly father who has had great plans for my life since the beginning of time. He knew who my parents would be, where I would go to school, he knew that I would find my way back to Him in college. He knew all of these things even before he formed me.
Just thinking about all those little details and how He wove my whole life together and is still weaving it each and every day I am just filled with so much joy and gratitude. And still I worry about the future and how it will be and who will be in it. But knowing that God is the author of my life brings me so much peace when those “what if?” questions pop up in my head. Sometimes I really want to be the author when things are not turning out the way I want them to but then I think to myself, “Could I write my story better than God himself?” I don’t think so! There is a level of trust and surrender that needs to happen when we truly let God be the author of our lives.
In this week’s Gospel we see the story between Mary and Joseph before Jesus was born. It was not two people who fell in love and had a baby but there was serious doubt and anger and messiness. We see that the story gets even messier when Joseph decides to divorce Mary quietly thinking that she had cheated on him with another man. But in retrospect we know that Mary’s child had been conceived by the Holy Spirit but Joseph did not believe in this.
Could you imagine the pain, anger and doubt Joseph must have felt? This part of the story has a sense of vulnerability to it because it shows us Joseph’s humanity. A humanity that we can all relate to when things are just not going our way. Thinking to ourselves “I could have written this part better if I were the author of my life.” Sometimes for us it is hard to accept the plans God has for us but once we do we see that God knew all along what our hearts truly needed. We see this when Joseph was greeted by an angel in his dream who told him to keep Mary as his wife and to name his son, Jesus. And all the people will call him Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us.” When Joseph wakes up he does exactly as the angel had said showing the same trust and surrender Mary showed when she was told she will bear a son. Both Mary and Joseph surrendered to God not knowing that God had a bigger plan in mind. That is a level of trust we all should imitate this Advent season.
Today let us thank God for being the author of our lives and for creating such a beautiful story that we can all look to each Advent season and remember the trust and surrender that both Mary and Joseph showed, in order to bring Jesus here on Earth. So that our Lord could walk among us. Let us pray for that same trust and surrender as we are preparing our hearts for Jesus this Advent season…And remembering that Emmanuel is truly with us each and every day.