The Friends You Find Along the Way

Luke 1:34-56, Mary visits Elizabeth

If we obey God, we’ll find ourselves in some strange circumstances, in some unusual kinds of communities.

And making unexpected friends … necessary friends.

This week’s passage in our Community, Purpose, Love series looks at a micro-community: just two women, a very young and pregnant Mary, and a very old and also pregnant Elizabeth.  While they are related to one another, they find themselves suddenly and unexpectedly thrown together by the purposes of God: Elizabeth is carrying the baby who will become John the Baptizer, and Mary bears in her womb the one who will be the Savior of the world.  That’s a pretty large purpose and a very tiny community!

But God doesn’t count noses, God reads hearts.  All he needs is a genuine from-the-heart Yes from some ordinary people, not a large number of “followers” and “likes” from a sizable crowd.

Picture Elizabeth and Mary one year before this passage.  If you had asked them to map out their lives over the next few years, neither one would have this on the map!  So one thing we can learn from them is this: learn to allow God to interrupt you.  The interruption may come via angel (Mary), via something that happens to someone close to you (an angel visits Elizabeth’s husband, not Elizabeth), through a passage in Scripture that suddenly somehow “lights up” for you, or in any one of the nearly infinite ways God finds to interrupt the interruptible.

God’s interruptions inevitably throw us into unexpected, unlikely friendships.  Mary and Elizabeth are separated in age by fifty or sixty years; Mary isn’t yet married, and Elizabeth is a well-seasoned spouse.  Neither has any special qualifications to participate in the purposes of God, they are just (a) interruptible and (b) willing to say Yes to God.  What drew them together wasn’t primarily natural affinities but the Holy Spirit and the purpose of God.

So this week we’ll be looking at what gets generated when the interrupting God brings a few interruptible people into alignment with his Word and purpose, when we allow God to bring us into unexpected friendships.

(HINT: Things like excited conversation, outbursts of poetry and song, revelation, deepening friendship-in-the-Lord, prayer … new life, life outside our normal boundaries and expectations.)

What kinds of friends do you need in this season?  And what kind of friend would you like to be?  How can you turn these desires into prayer?

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