Inconvenient!

My heart sank as I answered the phone, it was the bus driver on his way to pick us up from the Secondary weekend at Lendrick Muir, “I’m not going to make it, I’ve had to turn back, the roads are a nightmare…” How inconvenient! How disruptive! I was meant to be back in Hamilton for the first bubblegum ‘n’ fluff of the season the next day, I had a team of volunteers who needed to get back home, and most importantly all these young peoples' parents would have to be contacted, they would have to rearrange their plans to pick their young people up the next day, and we’d already stripped our beds!

I like to be organised and plan in advance, in fact it is essential to my job that I am organised, but here was a situation out of my hands, all we could do was to stay put and wait till it was safe to return to Lanarkshire. How appropriate that this should happen on the first Sunday in Advent, as we get ready to celebrate the arrival of Jesus. Mary must have felt extremely inconvenienced; she is waiting to get married, when she discovers she is pregnant; how inconvenient! How disruptive; to her life, her plans, her reputation, but what she is recorded as saying in Luke chapter 1 is, “I am the Lord’s servant” and later on she sings,

“He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.”

Maybe at this advent season and beyond we need a “corrective perspective” helped by Mary! So often we plan and prepare and see these as the important things, the places where God will work, and do what we would like him to do. Do we need to start seeing the inconvenient and disruptions as the places where we simply say “Lord I am your servant, show me in this situation how my humility and emptiness can show your mercy and glory?” I think I will give it a go, as we work together for his Kingdom to come!

Jen