November 30: Nothing is Impossible With God
♫ Music:
Day 3 - Tuesday, November 30
Title: NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD
Scripture: Luke 1:34-37
Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible.”
Poetry:
[Untitled]
by Mechtild of Magdeburg
[translated by Jane Hirshfield]
Of all that God has shown me
I can speak just the smallest word,
Not more than a honey bee
Takes on his foot
From an overspilling jar.
NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD
When Mary expresses her lack of comprehension for the message Gabriel has told her, the angel responds by affirming the truth that nothing is impossible with God. He tells Mary that “the Holy Spirit will come upon [her], and the power of the Highest will overshadow [her].”
“Overshadow” is an unusual verb, one that we tend to skip when we attend to this passage’s declaration of the exceeding power of the Highest. But it is important to note that Gabriel does not tell Mary that God will respond to her incomprehension by explaining things, or making her happy, or easing her experience of that to which she is called. Instead, in answer to her confusion, Gabriel tells Mary that God’s power will overshadow her.
Today’s artwork and poem help us access the sense of being “overshadowed.” Departure is an image that is strange to the eyes. It asks much of our attention, but does not invite understanding. It is an image of lightness and dark overlapping one another; clearly bounded but oddly private, immutable, and strange; consoling in their circular beauty; as distant from our human ability to make sense of things as is a sunrise, or the way darkness covers the earth every night.
The poem, brief enough to be quoted —
Of all that God has shown me
I can speak just the smallest word ,
Not more than a honey bee
Takes on his foot
From an overspilling jar.
— alludes to the unknowability of God’s power, which exists in an abundance we cannot comprehend. God gives us tastes of this abundance that nourish, delight, and even intoxicate us.
At the same time these tastes of abundance impress upon us the limits of our capacity to know God, and to perceive what He is doing in our lives. For God’s power always exceeds our capacity to understand. God’s power is therefore like darkness or shadow to our sight.
So it was with Mary, and that to a degree we can scarcely appreciate among the relative comforts of our daily lives. By promising that the incomprehensible will be accomplished because “nothing is impossible with God,” Gabriel tells Mary that God’s presence and power will embrace her within the shadow of her own unknowing, even as He creates glory within her.
Thus, the promise Mary receives is not that God’s exceeding power will make her life easy, understandable, or painless. Instead, she is promised that He will call her to participate in a work so holy that it will bring her to the very edge of herself, every day. She is promised that God’s power will cover and uphold her precisely there.
Mary’s astonishing example of faithfulness consists, at least in part, in the readiness with which she consents to be overshadowed; to inhabit—in every moment from her Son’s conception to her own death—realities she cannot possibly comprehend and, in so doing, to trust that God is with her.
May we, then, be like Mary. When the power of the Most High overshadows us, when God calls us to vocations that require us to inhabit what we do not know and can never understand or express, may we humbly say, with the Mother of our Lord, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me according to thy Word.”
Prayer:
Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me according to your word.
— Luke 1:38
O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
— 1928 Book of Common Prayer, a Collect for Quiet Confidence
Devotion Author:
Alea Peister
Copywriter at Deloitte Digital
Alumna of Biola English/Torrey Honors College
For more information about the artwork, music, poetry, and devotional writer selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Departure
Agnes Pelton
1952
Oil on canvas
24 × 18 in.
Collection of Mike Stoller and Corky Hale Stoller
Photograph by Paul Salveson
Although artist Agnes Pelton painted conventional landscapes and portraits, she is most celebrated for her abstract compositions that reflect her interest in spirituality. Seeking to capture the “deeper resonance beneath the visible world,” Pelton painted landscapes of a different dimension. Her imagery came from within, often sourced from dreams, meditation, and waking visions. Pelton’s interest in spirituality, abstraction, and fantastical color use was different from the dominant trends of American Modernism and this made her works distinctly unique within the history of modern art.
https://www.californiaartreview.com/journal/review-agnes-pelton-desert-transcendentalist-color-reigns-supreme-at-palm-springs-art-museum
About the Artist:
Agnes Pelton (1881–1961) was a visionary symbolist artist who depicted the spiritual reality she experienced in moments of meditative stillness. Art for her was a discipline through which she gave form to her vision of a higher consciousness within the universe. Using an abstract vocabulary of curvilinear, biomorphic forms, and delicate veils of light, she portrayed her awareness of a world that lay beyond physical appearances. For most of her career, Pelton chose to live away from the distractions of a major art center, first in Water Mill, Long Island, from 1921 to 1932; and subsequently in Cathedral City, a small community near Palm Springs, California. Her isolation from the mainstream art world meant that her paintings were relatively unknown during her lifetime and have only gained recognition within the canon of modern and contemporary art history in the decades after her passing.
https://whitney.org/exhibitions/agnes-pelton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Lawrence_Pelton
About the Music:
“All Things Are Possible (Gabriel)” from the album Immanuel: The Folk Sessions
Lyrics:
Mary, full of grace
Don't be afraid
God is with You
Favored One
You will bear a Son
All things are possible
Nothing's impossible
All things are possible
It's not what the mind conceives
Daughter believe
You are covered by an angel's wing
He'll be a king
All things are possible
Nothing's impossible
All things are possible
There will be flame
The Light within the shadow
And there will be no end to His reign
Jesus will be His name
All things are possible
Nothing's impossible
All things are possible
All things are possible
Nothing's impossible
All things are possible
About the Performers:
Melanie Penn featuring The Arcadian Wild
The Arcadian Wild are an American contemporary folk band formed in 2013 in Nashville, Tennessee. Led by songwriters Isaac Horn (guitar) and Lincoln Mick (mandolin), and with the support of other gifted musicians, The Arcadian Wild confidently explores an intersection of genres, blending the traditional with the contemporary in order to create a unique acoustic sound that is simultaneously unified and diverse. With one foot planted firmly in choral and formal vocal music, and the other in progressive folk and bluegrass, the band offers up songs of invitation: calls to come and see, to find refuge and rest, or to journey and wonder.
https://www.thearcadianwild.com/band
About the Composer/Lyricist:
Melanie Grayson Penn is an American Christian musician, who primarily plays an Indie pop, folk rock, and alternative country style of music. After studying classical voice, she moved to New York City and pursued musical theatre where she enjoyed several years as a mainstay in the theatre scene. Penn then started a collaboration with Nashville producer Ben Shive. Their first album together was called Wake Up Love (2010), and was met with unexpected critical acclaim. Three more albums followed in continued collaboration with Shive: Hope Tonight (2015); Immanuel (2017); and Immanuel: The Folk Sessions (2019). The Immanuel Project, Melanie’s songwriting journey through the Christmas story, has been hailed as a songwriting tour de force by both the Christian and mainstream press. The Immanuel Concert is now a regular part of many church and private event Christmas celebrations across the United States. For many years Penn also served as a worship leader at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, under the leadership of author and theologian Tim Keller.
https://www.melaniepenn.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Penn
About the Poet:
Mechthild of Magdeburg (c.1207–c.1282/1294) was a Christian medieval mystic, whose books are a compendium of visions, prayers, dialogues, and mystical accounts. Magdeburg was born into a noble family. She experienced her first religious vision at the age of twelve, and apparitions appeared to her daily thereafter. In 1230, she left her home to become a Beguine, one of a group of evangelical women who took vows together but chose to live in the world rather than a convent. Mechthild’s seven-volume book, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, was one of the first German mystic texts composed in vernacular Low German rather than Latin. In 1250, she began writing the mix of prose revelations and poems that characterize The Flowing Light of the Godhead and completed the final volume fourteen years later. Her devotional poems echo courtly love poetry as well as folk songs. Her book is both an account of her own ecstatic, passionate experience of divine vision and a fearless condemnation of vices she observed in the local clergy. Some scholars believe her account of the afterworld influenced Dante’s Divine Comedy. Her book was largely forgotten after her death until its rediscovery in the late nineteenth century. Poet and translator Jane Hirshfield included a sampling of Mechthild’s poetry in the anthology Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (1994). Mechthild’s work has also gained recent attention from feminist scholars, including Sara S. Poor, author of Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (2004). https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mechthild-of-magdeburg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechthild_of_Magdebur
About the Devotion Author:
Alea Peister
Copywriter for Deloitte Digital
Alumna of English/Biola’s Torrey Honors College
Biola University
Alea Peister is passionate about the ways art and literature can teach us to pray. In her free time, she takes long walks, watches sitcoms, seeks out good coffee, travels, and reads books. She also writes poetry (which she shares on Instagram at @alea_peister, and on her blog, www.forthesakeofsharing.com). Alea works as a Copywriter for the creative teams at Deloitte Digital. She is a 2017 alumna of Biola English and the Torrey Honors College.