My Plans Have Changed

She was an attractive girl and he fell in love in her very quickly. Not only was she pleasing to his eyes, but there was a goodness about her, an inward strength, quiet but unmistakable. She felt the same way about him. She knew that he was a good man. She trusted him. They got engaged. They would get married and raise a family in Nazareth. This was how they envisioned their happiness would be.

Then their plans changed. And you can’t make up this next part: Mary discovered she was pregnant. There was more than the usual surprise in this; because Mary had never been with Joseph or any other man. Really. And yet. . .well, there it was, the unmistakable signs of a life begun in her womb. Can you imagine the shock and tears and shame, and utter bewilderment that she must have felt? And Joseph, he felt it too. Seemingly, their dreams of a happy life together were shattered. He couldn’t marry her now. Even though he loved her, he had to say goodbye.

Life has a way of interrupting our plans.

Faith Hill has a new song about this event called A Baby Changes Everything.

Teenage girl, much too young, unprepared for what’s to come
A baby changes everything
Not a ring on her hand, all her dreams and all her plans
A baby changes everything

The man she loves she’s never touched, how will she keep his trust
A baby changes everything
A baby changes everything

Joan Didion is author of the best-selling book, The Year of Magical Thinking. It is this successful writer’s attempt to make sense of the sudden loss of her equally successful writer-husband, John Gregory Dunne. They had come home from the hospital where their only child was in a coma. They sat down for dinner, and he died of a massive coronary. The book’s title refers to her growing awareness that she kept behaving as if somehow her husband would come back. She knew better but she could not stop the irrational thoughts that death would not be allowed the last word. Didion writes how people in her world shared a habit of mind usually credited to the very successful:

They believed absolutely in their own management skills. They believed
Absolutely in the power of the telephone numbers they had at their
fingertips; the right doctor, the major donor; the person who could facilitate
a favor at State or Justice. The management skills of these people were in
fact prodigious. I had myself for most of my life shared the same core belief
in my ability to control events. Yet. . .some events just happen. This was one
of those events. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

In the end, she concludes we are all powerless. One of the lines that recur in her book is a reaction to Jesus’ teaching. She writes, “no eye is on the sparrow.” It is the last line of her book.

I can understand that feeling. It is a shock when our illusion of control is broken. Things happen. And life as we know it ends. We are reminded, sometimes very unkindly, that we are not in control. Ernest Becker says, “I am in control” is not just a lie; it is the vital lie because we need it for our egos to survive. “We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not control our lives, that we always rely on something that transcends us.”

A deeper problem with trying to maintain the illusion of full control is that it puts me at odds with other people. Control-freaks find other people very annoying and disappointing. Cf’s are perpetually irritable and frustrated. Other people are always a problem.

The oil tycoon played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the film, There Will Be Blood, has a level of power and control few people in this world attain, if attain is the right word. But, not so coincidentally, toward the end of his life his emotional isolation rivals his power. “I look at people and see nothing worth liking,” he confesses.

“People do not behave the way I want them to,” John Ortberg writes, “so I try to find some way to manipulate them , placate them, flatter them, intimidate them, or boss them around.”

I walk into work: things run my way, my projects have been completed, tasks I have assigned have been carried out. What does that mean? It means I’m in charge. This is my little kingdom.

I go into my kids’ rooms: beds are made just as I prescribed; chores are done just as I commanded. What does that mean? It means I’m in charge. This is my little kingdom.

I walk through the door at the end of the day: my slippers are laid out by the La-Z-Boy, my iced tea is ready, my paper is waiting for me, my dinner is on the stove. What does this mean? It means I have walked into the wrong house.

If we really were in control, our hopes would die with us. But if there is another Master, a better one, then there is a better hope. The Joseph of the Old Testament found this out. Out of jealousy, his brothers sold him into slavery when he was just seventeen. He spent many years in servitude and then in prison; yet in the end, the very attempts to destroy him led to his becoming the most powerful man in Egypt next to Pharaoh. His brothers ended up throwing themselves at his feet, saying, “We are your slaves.” But Joseph didn’t want slaves. He came to realize that there is a Great Power at work in the world.

“Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
How did all this happen? Someone’s eye was on the sparrow.

When Mary received the visit from the angel, she reacted pretty much the way you or I or would react. She no more expected to see an angel than to see snow in July. And when the angel said to her, “Greetings and hail favored one. . .” Mary rightly wondered “what sort of greeting this might be.” What did it mean, me getting visited by an angel and the angel saying I was picked by God?

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. . .”

She can feel it coming soon, there’s no place, there’s no room
A baby changes everything

Our Joseph and Mary didn’t know they were in a prophecy about to be fulfilled. Remember, they couldn’t read the ending of their story in advance. They had to trust. They had to surrender. And they did. They stayed together and had the baby and trusted that God would keep his promise. They found that in surrendering to God comes power. They were not in control of their lives, but God was, and through them the Lord shook the very foundations of power in the world through these two trusting teenagers.

At some point, it dawned on Mary and Joseph, that the out-of-their-control mess their lives seemed to have become was moving toward something favorable. Despite the shame of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the hardship of a long journey taken to another town just to be taxed, and the overall preposterousness of their four-member family (Joseph, Mary, baby, and Holy Spirit); they began to sense that God was with them.

“They shall name him Emmanuel, which means, ‘God is with us.’”

Choir of angels say glory to the newborn king
A baby changes everything

Mary and Joseph surrendered control. “I am the Lord’s handmaiden,” Mary said.
And in that surrender to a change of plans they not only found their faith strengthened, they saw a blessing that went far beyond anything that they could have imagined. It was blessing and good news for all people, everywhere, for all time.

My whole life is turned around
I was lost and now I’m found
A baby changes everything
A baby changes everything

I want to believe, that in their old age, Joseph turned to Mary and said, “You know, you couldn’t have made that up.”

Intro to prayer: God is with us. What would it look like for the Holy Spirit to be a member of your family?