Morning Prayer

Luke 11:27,28 (For the Bible verse click here)

Have you ever noticed how we are increasingly living in our heads these days? "Self-image", digital profiles to create an online alter-ego, ideas that "work for me" - all these aspects of modern life are considered by many acceptable, possibly even indispensable. It is very easy to become our own frame of reference and life is so much more simple when we only have ourselves to deal with.

Jesus calls us out of these things back into reality. God calls us to engage for real with who He is.

In these verses, a woman calls out to Jesus from the crowd exclaiming that his mother must be blessed to have borne him. I imagine that she is thinking about how proud she must be seeing her son teaching such wonderful things and being celebrated by so many people. Maybe the woman is thinking about how she would feel to have a famous son, how it would embellish her standing and make her famous by association. Wouldn't it give a whole new dimension to life to have raised someone like Jesus!

But of course, the reality for Jesus and Mary are very different. Mary knows real cost of her calling and the sword that will pierce her heart is always present. She would remember the frightening times of childhood, running away from a mad king who was trying to find her family and kill her son; she would remember the growing self-awareness in Jesus - an understanding of what it was actually going to take for her son, God's Son, to walk the path of obedience, the path to the cross.

Jesus responds to the woman that true blessing only comes from obedience to God and walking in His Way; He is not placing a disciple above Mary, or belittling his mother - exactly the opposite. He is explaining how Mary is truly blessed. Not through the social standing or public pride from the temporary popularity which would pass very soon, but through the deep obedience of walking and living in the path that God has called her to.

The woman in the crowd is called to look deeper to find who she can be in Christ; the same call is made to us today. Only be fully engaging with God and the world around us will find life in its fullness. Only be letting go of the obsession with self-interest and a constructing a make-believe world around ourselves will we be able to embrace and play our part in God's ongoing Creation - so far beyond our own limited imaginings.