Exactly Right

I look at the situation before me as if it
were exactly right for me.
—MADAM GUYON

WARM-UP: Luke 1:26–38

The angel said to Mary, “You have found favor with God.You will be with child and give birth to a son” (Luke 1:30–31). The angelic announcement, which brings us such joy, brought unspeakable heartache to Mary.

From the beginning, rumors swirled around her character. The Pharisaic brush-off, “[At least] we are not illegitimate children” ( John 8:41), is perpetuated in the ancient Talmud, a collection of Rabbinic writings that describes Jesus as “the illegitimate son of Mary.” And then there was Mary’s husband-to-be, Joseph, and his impetuous decision to “put her away”; the sudden departure for Bethlehem in the last days of her pregnancy; the unassisted birth in a cold, filthy cave; the perilous flight to escape Herod’s fury—all the beginning of sorrows that culminated at the foot of the cross when a sword, as Simon predicted, was thrust to the hilt into Mary’s soul.

But Mary knew that her lot was ordained by God, and she humbly accepted His will: “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said” (Luke 1:38). We must not forget her heartache, and we must not fail to learn her words.

We must learn them in the realities of life that are thrust upon us: in the care of an aging, ill-tempered parent, or a disagreeable ADHD child; in a trying and tiresome marriage where nothing works and nothing seems to matter; in the humbling of physical disablement or disfigurement; in the burden of prolonged pain and suffering; in the cramping restrictions of mindless and meaningless work; in the emptiness of a lonely and loveless existence; in the losses and limitations that accompany old age.

If we plan to move into intimacy with Jesus, we must abandon our whole existence, offering it up to Him.We must believe that every circumstance of our life—every moment as well as the course of our entire life, anything and everything that happens to us—has come to us by God’s will and by His permission and is exactly what we need.

The only way to learn Mary’s words is to know that God’s will is “good, acceptable and perfect,” and to accept day by day the conditions and circumstances He permits; to lay down our will and patiently submit to His will as it is presented to us day by day in the form of the people with whom we have to live and work, and in the things that keep happening to us.

Jeanne Guyon, a seventeenth-century woman, learned Mary’s words. At age sixteen, Jeanne was forced into an arranged marriage with an invalid forty years older than she. She found her marriage to be a place of utter humiliation. Her husband was an angry melancholic. Her mother-in-law was a merciless critic. Even her servant girl despised her. Despite her best attempts at devotion to her husband and family, Madame Guyon found herself subject to relentless criticism and hostility.

Forbidden by her husband to go to church, she sought God in His Word and worshiped Him in secret. Alone with God, she learned that each situation before her was, as she put it, “exactly right,” and thus, despite her dreary circumstances, she was “perfectly fine—within the safe hands of God.”34

She writes, “Here is a true spiritual principle that the Lord will not deny: God gives us the cross and the cross gives us God. . . .Abandonment [to His cross] is the key to the inward spiritual life. It is the key to fathomless depths.”35

“But,” you say, “I’m a woman or a man of action. I make things happen. This counsel is much too passive for me.” Consider Mary, the mother of our Lord: through her “passivity,” God brought forth our salvation.

This, then, is our prayer, “May it be to me as you have said.”
I said, “I will accept the breaking sorrow
Which God tomorrow
Will to me explain.”
Then did the turmoil deep within me cease.
Not vain the word: vain, vain;
For in acceptance lieth peace.
—Amy Carmichael

Taken from Out of the Ordinary, ©2003 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566 Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.