Our conversation drew to a close.
There was a pregnant pause.
I waited for the girl to respond.
She said yes.
She understood little of what would follow.
How could she?
I’d told her that she was known, that her ordinary life had been noticed and counted as significant. It was the life of so many in the back-end of the world’s greatest empire. A life of buying at the market, cleaning houses, repairing clothes, cooking meals, playing with children, catching up with local news, avoiding troublesome demonstrations, paying one’s dues, preparing for her own wedding celebrations.
I doubt she ever thought she was significant. I doubt that she ever thought her life mattered to anyone outside her family and her fiancé. But on this day, she heard me say that this life, her life, was about so much more. The very ordinariness of a young woman’s days all added up to something quite remarkable. And though, to many watching her, nothing would change, for her, everything would change.
Because she believed me. She allowed herself to be enlisted into a different storyline, one that she could never have expected. A story that would change everything.
So it began.
Five words that opened up a new future: ‘I am the Lord’s servant’.
It’s always begun that way.
Five words that begin the adventure.
(written by Neil Hudson)
