I don’t know about you but sometimes I don’t feel like I am doing anything that significant with my life. That can be hard for me because I want to make an impact on the world around me, I want my life to matter. I think some of you might be able to relate to that feeling. I think these feelings are something that we all deal with from time to time because we were all created on purpose for a purpose and it’s our hearts desire to live that out. The problem is that sometimes our sense of significance can become distorted based on the expectations of the world or the people around us.
With today being Ash Wednesday and the start of the lent season Christians all over the world are all thinking about the life of Jesus. Today though I’ve been thinking about Mary. We can all agree that Mary carries a great amount of significance but outside of giving birth to Jesus, the Bible does not really give us much information about her life. We know that Mary was personally chosen by God. She didn’t just happen to be the mother of Jesus, she was hand selected by God to bring his only son to life on earth. The lack of details about all of the ways that Mary had an impact on the world around her to me means that the things that made Mary significant to God are not necessiarly the same things that would make her significant to people.
I think Mary stood out to God because of who she was in her day to day life. Her significance was in how she was faithful in the things that no one else saw or maybe cared about. God knew who she was and he was sure he could trust her to be a good mom and to raise his only son. Mom’s have a big impact on their kids and God knew he could trust Mary with Jesus’ whole life on earth from the very beginning to the very end.
This is really encouraging to me because if God was paying attention to Mary and hand selected her, even if no one else saw her significance, then he’s paying attention to me too. He’s watching how I live day in and day out. Even if I don’t ever feel significant God sees and values that I am being faithful to the things that he has called me to do. This brings so much value to the things I do every day and encourages me to live my day to day life in a way that honors him. It helps me to see that even the seemingly insignificant things matter.
I hope that you are encouraged by this too. I hope that this week and in the weeks to come that you remember that God sees you and he values the way that you show your faithfulness toward him, especially in the day to day things that may seem to go unnoticed.