The Power of Yes

Yes. This is often the answer we want to hear. Especially to questions like: Will you marry me? Or can I have a raise? Or can I get an extension on the due date for this assignment? Or did I pass all my classes? Or are my medical scans clear?

We love to hear yes! But do we have this same excitement when something is asked of us? Can you help me move to a new apartment this weekend? Or do you want to teach in the religious education program this year? Or can I borrow $500?

Offering a yes can be tricky. It is a willingness to offer a part of ourselves as a gift to someone else. It is also an opening up to possible discomforts, challenges, unknowns, and fears. Alongside these feelings are positive possibilities. A yes can bring blessings, new opportunities, grace, and mercy, as well as deeper encounters with friends, family, and God.

It is fair to say many of these same emotions and thoughts were coursing through Mary as the angel appeared to her with the news of her impending pregnancy. 

Set aside for a moment that an other-worldly being was appearing to her and talking to her. She was going to be pregnant? As a virgin? Before completing the marriage rite?

What was Joseph going to say? What about her parents and the community? Why would God ask this of her? The questions must have been a mile a minute all while an angel from heaven was glowing and floating and waiting for her answer. (At least that is how I see the scene in my head.)

I imagine the grace of God was heavy in this moment, and, like a flood, it washed away all her questions and allowed her trust in God and her abiding faith to give her clear vision to simply say, “Let it be done to me according to Your will.”

Mary’s “fiat” (“Let it be done”) is an exemplary model for how to say yes to all that God brings our way. And just like Mary’s yes, the full ramifications and implications of the assent were not known at the time of its telling.

Think of some of the big yeses we might say in our life. The yes to college or career. Maybe we changed our major a few times, or have changed jobs over the years, or never finished college, or have been laid off. What seemed like a straightforward yes can turn into a topsy-turvy, wild ride.

Or the “I do” to our spouse that set in motion countless other joys and struggles, some expected, other never imagined. A professor once told me of a time when he was up at 3 a.m. with a colicky baby. He was lamenting to God how tired he was and how soon the workday was going to start. He glanced at the wall and saw his wedding picture and felt God say to him, “When you said ‘Yes’ then, you were saying ‘Yes’ to now.”

Or the yes to caring for aging parents, which brings many super emotionally charged moments; some levels of vulnerability that never crossed our minds; and some glimpses into our parents’ lives that, as children, we could never have imagined.

As we bask in the wonder of Christmas with the New Year upon us, it seems like a good time to ask ourselves the question with the most important “Yes” of all: Have we ever said “Yes” to God in the total-surrender “My life is yours, do with me what you will” way of Mary? 

The love of God incarnate in Jesus is the physical manifestation of the question the Father has been asking every person He has ever created. Today, in this moment He is asking you: Will you be mine?

Jeff Hedglen is the campus minister of the University Catholic Community at the University of Texas in Arlington.