Mary - Saying Yes
Selections from Luke 1
The angel Gabriel was sent by God ... to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph.... Now listen: You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will call His name JESUS.... Mary asked the angel, How can this be, since I have not been intimate with a man? The angel replied to her: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the holy child to be born will be called the Son of God.... For nothing will be impossible with God. Consider me the Lord's slave, said Mary. May it be done to me according to your word. Try reading this passage, not in the light of Christmas, but in the darkness of the years before it. Put yourself in the room with Mary. Listen to what the angel is asking her to believe. Would you be afraid? Yes. Upset? Yes. Would you be able to say ... yes? How do we know whether something we've seen, felt, or heard is really from God? What proof did Mary have once her eyes readjusted to the now dim-looking sunlight, once her heart rate slowed down, once the boom of the angel's voice gave way to the whistle of a songbird? Nothing except a pretty good hunch. But as she waited, little things began to happen. Waves of morning sickness. Jabs and kicks from her womb that awakened her in the night. When it's God, the proof keeps coming, as we watch and wait.Look At It This Way ...He found the little dull town, the dusty street, the right house. In obedience, he went in, stood before the astonished girl, and spoke. An angel's voice, speaking in the accents of Nazareth. Mary was not a feeble girl weak and without spunk, imagination, or initiative. Subsequent action proves that. But she was meek. Never confuse weak with meek. She was meek as Moses was meek -- strong and holy enough to recognize her place under God. Thoughts of what people would say, what Joseph would say, or how she would ever convince them that she had not been unfaithful were instantly set aside. Mission accomplished, the angel left her. Back he flies, past Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, beyond the Southern Cross and the Milky Way, and finally to the firmament of his native world where the will of the God of all those heavens and firmaments is always done, and always done perfectly. He brought back a message: On that planet, in Galilee, in a town called Nazareth, in the house to which God had sent him, the girl named Mary had said yes. Elisabeth Elliot A Final Thought:The whole premise of Christianity is beyond understanding a God who became man, a man who became our perfect sacrifice. Do we always have to understand in order to obey?
