God gives choices

"Mary said, 'Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.'"

Luke 1:38

 

On thinking about this today I had the fleeting thought that, since Mary was sinless from birth, as we believe, her "Yes!" to God's plan should not come as a surprise to us, should it?  She was destined to do God's will from the moment of her conception.  So the thing that fascinates me in this reading today, is that God still gave her a choice.  She still could have said "No, thanks. Please choose someone else."  And God would have been OK with that. God gave Mary the same free will that we receive. We, sinners that we are, have many choices throughout our days that we can choose to do the godly thing or not.  We can choose to forgive or choose to hold onto anger.  We can choose to give cheerfully to others, or we can bitterly negate the poor and cling to what we have.  We can choose to show kindness to a stranger, or we can walk on by--after all, we don't know them.  God gives us sinners a choice just as God gave sinless Mary a choice.  How will we respond?  Love, heidi