Something About Mary

I've always been impressed with young Mary in the Christmas story.

We Christians are definitely not supposed to worship her or channel her or try to pray to her but she is to be appreciated and respected. She is a good role model. Luke's Gospel reveals lots about her that is worth emulating.

Take her purity, for example. She came to her marriage to Joseph a virgin. Though her carrying and giving birth to God's son created suspicion and scandal on the part of those who didn't understand and couldn't believe her story of a Spirit-conceived pregnancy, we know the facts and believe the biblical record. We know that Christ's nativity was supernatural and miraculous in origin. And we are convinced that this teenager had never had sexual relations before her marriage. In our day, sexual experimentation and promiscuity is commonplace, and is proving physically, emotionally, and relationally damaging to millions of young people. Mary reminds us that it is best to stay morally clean and pure until your wedding day.

I'm fascinated, too, by this girl's sense of wonder at the mystery of God's workings. Luke 1:34-38 demonstrates that. When the announcing angel gave her a revelation that she found hard to grasp, she wasn't afraid to ask honest questions. And she did so respectfully. And when the angel's explanation was itself too incredible to fathom, she believed anyway and submitted herself to the will of God.

Sooner or later, all believers have to realize that there is much about the Lord and His dealings that we just can't figure out. He is so big. He is so great. It bothers me when I'm around Christians who act and talk like they know everything there is to know about the Almighty and spiritual things. With their charts and memorized verses and strong acquiantance with Bible facts they come across as armed to logically pontificate on all matters divine. They assume that God does everything the same way everytime. They put God in a box, perhaps unconsciously feeling that He can be controlled that way and they can be safe. Mary's experience suggests that our God is a mysterious being, far beyond the ability of our limited minds to completely understand. Certainly we should always be reaching out for more light about Him but never thinking that we've arrived and have all the truth neatly arranged and packaged and manageable. God will inevitably surprise us! Our proper response is to live on tiptoe and by faith and in submission to His leading. Having a lot of doctrine stored up in our heads or having a powerful testimony of something God did in our lives in the past doesn't necessarily make us experts in what God is up to right now.

It is true, though, that this young girl marvelously used by the Lord did benefit from having scripture stockpiled in her heart. In Luke 1:46-55, she draws upon Old Testament texts memorized to craft her own personal, straight-from-the-soul song of praise to God for His blessing in her life. That's one more thing I like about her. She read, listened to, and reflected on God's Word and it shaped her thinking and her conversation. It gave her hope for the future. A worthy goal for us in the new year about to dawn would be to spend more time in The Book, soaking up its treasures.