‘And the soul felt its worth’: Answering the Christmas call
We are worthy, at Christmas and always, to answer the divine call to bring joy, healing, and peace to the world.
There is no part of the Christmas story that better illustrates the spiritual nature of each one’s worthiness, than the Bible account of the angel Gabriel’s visit with Mary. In this story, the angel lets Mary know that she is highly favored, blessed, and honored, as she has been chosen to bring forth a son and name him Jesus.
At first, Mary is fearful, but then she humbly accepts the life-changing goodness she is being called to be a part of. Gabriel gently brings her into the promise that “with God nothing shall be impossible.” Mary’s simple reply? “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:37, 38).
Mary had a joyful and deep spiritual sense of her oneness with God. She said to her cousin Elisabeth, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour” (Luke 1:46, 47).
In relation to this, Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, writes, “The illumination of Mary’s spiritual sense put to silence material law and its order of generation, and brought forth her child by the revelation of Truth, demonstrating God as the Father of men. ... Jesus was the offspring of Mary’s self-conscious communion with God” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” pp. 29-30). Mary accepted God’s will as she began to see the magnitude of the revelatory idea Christ Jesus would be bringing to the world: that we are ever one with God, good.
Mary trusted God’s love for her. She was worthy – not because she earned it, not because she asked for it, but because God created her worthy. Her spiritual sense, her “conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (Science and Health, p. 209), soon overrode all fear, doubt, and human reasoning. The illumination and revelation of Truth Mary experienced, and her acceptance that she was loved of God, gave her the humility and willingness to answer this call.
So, what can we glean from Mary’s experience? Her role was, of course, incomparable and unique, but even in the far humbler assignments that fall to us today, we too may have to deal with our own incredulity about the good that is possible now. We may balk at and even be fearful of the idea that we are indeed worthy enough to do even more good than we may have thought possible.
But God’s grace is always bringing us into a greater sense of our value. The rendering of John 3:16 in “The Message” by Eugene H. Peterson speaks plainly: “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son .... so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.” Jesus – born of Mary and endowed with the Christ, the true idea of God – gave all of us an example of what divine sonship looks like. Jesus’ birth was the startling revelation of our divinely natural relation to God, our divine Father-Mother. It gave us a way to understand that we are each made in the image and likeness of God, who made everything good and worthy.
We can experience the divine delight that God has for us and feel our holy worth. This accelerates our confidence and capacity to be and do good – from answering a friend’s call for help, to writing an inspirational article for this column (speaking from my own experience), and much more.
Like Mary, we can accept God’s love for us as fundamental to our worthiness and see our lives open up to an abundance of selfless living and spiritual growth.
Mary’s story gives us a way to pause and realize the wholeness and sacredness of life, to recognize that we are loved and worthy to be called the children of God, and to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. The birth of Christ Jesus breaks through a weary world of conflict, sickness, and sin. We are called to help stem the tide of materiality and turn thought to “a new and glorious morn” of comfort, healing, and peace. We all have a part to play in this hopeful and holy night of Christmas and every new day.
O holy night, the stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birthLong lay the world in sin and error pining
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worthA thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn...
(John Sullivan Dwight, from the French original by Placide Cappeau)