Search me, O God
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Test me and know my thoughts. Psalm 139:23
Read Luke 1:13—17
How to express the central challenge I find in this reading? Here is a childless couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth, promised a son. Most couples I know will say, at the prospect of a child being given to them, ‘We don’t want to put our agenda onto our child. Above all, let him find himself; let her be the person she wants to become.’ So to that couple this baby-to-be-born looks to have missed out on who he could have been, to have been abandoned to a role prescribed for him, sacrificed to a purpose not his own. He’ll have no life of his own to enjoy. I, too, have these thoughts. It is hard, even shameful to acknowledge this in the presence of God. Thinking this way reveals a spirit within me. It shows that I suspect that God is a cheat, that being sold out to God’s purpose would be no fun at all, rather a robbery to my own life.
Lord, my God, I confess my thoughts in shame before you. I confess my misbelief. I see I have Eve in me, Adam in me. I confess that I want to hold things back from you, hide things for my exclusive enjoyment. You know what these things are: which thoughts, which images, what possessions I love, which dreams I nurture that I imagine can be kept from you. I have a fear that a life like John’s, wholly devoted to you and daily conscious of you, will somehow cheat me. Yet you renewed the hearts of others through this devoted life. Forgive me, for Jesus’ sake. Forgive me and change me. Let me rise tomorrow ready to see the hearts of others renewed. I pray for the gritty grace to surrender to you everything and anything that I have tried to keep from you.