January 18

BEING EMOTIONAL & SENSIBLE

Father, thank You for bringing me to this place and this time today. I ask You to speak to me right now, and to let Your Word breathe life into my heart. Please use these next few moments to bring me to more of a fullness of You and to learn more of Your Glory and how to leave the footprints of Jesus everywhere I go today. In Jesus Name I pray. Amen!

Read Luke 1:46-56

I love the stark contrast between verses 46-55 and verse 56. In the first 10 verses of this passage, we find Mary being given to great emotion and bursting forth into song. She is showing her emotions and expressing her feelings over what is taking place in her life.

I can easily relate to this part of the passage. Saying that I live by my emotions might be an understatement. I do not hide my feelings well at all, and many things cause me to become emotionally involved. Many of these often create a desire to shout out or, like Mary, burst into song: the first kiss with a girlfriend, the OU Sooners or New York Yankees winning a big game, someone cutting me off in traffic (not all emotional outbursts are positive), or numerous other happenings. I can easily grasp why Mary released her emotions as she did.

Verse 56, though, is of a completely different nature. It says Mary stayed about three months with Elizabeth, and then went home. Why did she stay that long? Well a few verses earlier, Gabriel had told Mary that Elizabeth was in her sixth month. So apparently, Mary stayed until John was born. As I write this, my sister is about two months away from giving birth to her third child. As a woman nears the time to give birth, there is a lot to be done. Even more so for a first child, and I have to believe this fact was deeper over two thousand years ago. So Mary stays to help out with tasks that had to be done. Also, because Elizabeth was considerably older than Mary was, I am guessing that Mary was able to help out quite a bit. So this verse shows a great deal or practicality and sensibility.

Being one that lives primarily on emotion, I sometimes struggle with being practical. Maybe for you it is just the opposite. Maybe you are incredibly practical, but fail to show emotion very often. These verses show that we need both, that to live in a way to bring glory to God, we need to be at times emotional and at times quite practical.

Today I encourage you to leave His footprints by being both emotional and sensible.

Leave His footprints as you walk today!