“I am the Lord’s servant,” said Mary. “May it be done to me according to your word.” (1:38) “Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill what he has spoken to her!” (1:45)
Mary is one of those bible characters that you can’t help but admire. I do realize that the Roman Catholic Church has basically deified her over the years, but I fear that this has forced evangelicals to swing the pendulum too far the other way. In an attempt to not make her more than human we often brush over the truly extraordinary things she did and said. Think about it; an angel came to visit her and she took the news all in stride. Of course, she was a bit confused about how she would get pregnant without a husband, but she never doubted and she never wavered. She said, “Whatever God has for me… I am ready.” What a sweet and steady faith from someone who was a nobody, from a nowhere town who had never been educated or trained. She trusted God and that He knew what was best.
Hearing about Elizabeth’s amazing pregnancy as well, Mary makes the long journey to visit her and rejoice with her about what God was doing in their lives. Again, when Elizabeth jumps for joy (along with the baby inside her) Mary just takes it all in stride. She never gets puffed up or prideful and she never questions the Lord’s will. She believed that God would do what He said he would do, and she took it all at face value. How I wish we could be more like that. How I wish that we could trust without doubting and just take Him at His word without overthinking things or overanalyzing what God is up to, what the big picture is and what everything means. Mary had this ability to just “treasure everything in her heart” and ponder the majesty of God without ever questioning His plan.
She was faithful, but she was also courageous. The bible doesn’t say a lot about what Mary (and Joseph) went through and what they suffered. Mary is not the hero of the story, Jesus is. However, it is easy to speculate about the pressure she endured when people realized she was pregnant out of wedlock. In those days women were often stoned for much less. We can imagine that long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem and we can picture the challenge of sleeping in a stable; we cannot easily imagine the horror of giving birth in one. I realize that people were not as coddled in Mary’s day as they are today, but few of us would want to go through childbirth without a hospital and a doctor. Mary and Joseph, practically kids themselves, went through that all alone, in the dark, in a smelly, unsanitary place designed for livestock. I cannot imagine the courage and the faith that took, and yet we have no record of complaint… just her “treasuring things in her heart.” It didn’t matter if nobody knew who Mary was; God knew her and He was with her and that was enough for her. It is enough for us as well.
