Isaiah 9:6 – For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, ‘Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!’” (Luke 1:26-28).
In one moment of time, young Mary’s life was forever changed. As the angel of the Lord spoke about her future, Mary went from an obscure Jewish teenager to the hand-selected mother of the long-awaited Messiah. Everything changed when she understood her destiny.
Mary didn’t know power or popularity, wealth or fame; we don’t even know her last name. Yet she was chosen above all the women throughout time to bring the greatness of God’s salvation and healing into this world.
It’s the kind of salvation needed by both paupers and presidents, rich and poor, black, white, known and obscure. And such healing would become the spark of life in the darkness of dead men’s souls, and bridge the great divide between lost humanity and a loving God.
Yet her journey was not without difficulty as she had to deal with practical facts: not fully understanding God’s plan, judgmental people speaking lies about her, her own doubts and fears, and trusting God to vindicate and protect her. Mary’s story was a trial of faith. Yet she made it through and so can we.
Because like Mary, we are all, in our own God-ordained way, called to bring something extraordinary into the world.
“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16).
But to do so, we must learn from Mary’s experience.
1. Commit to Personal Righteousness
“Personal righteousness” refers to a commitment by believers to live consistent with God’s high calling to carry His light into a lost world. We must commit to display integrity, purity, honor, respect and holiness. Our lives should be examples for others to emulate – not perfect lives without fault, failure or messiness, but lives that are consistent with being on a mission for God Himself.
We must hold grace, not as an excuse to sin, but as a motivating force to live honorably before God. We should neither become judgmental nor a stumbling block to those who desperately need Christ’s forgiveness. Personal righteousness is a battle that we commit to fight in order to be examples of God’s love that helps lead people to salvation.
And I believe “personal righteousness” was a factor in Mary’s selection to bear the Messiah for mankind:
“…to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary” (Luke 1:27).
“Then Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I do not know a man?’” (Luke 1:34).
These verses imply that Mary, who was divinely chosen for this extraordinary task, was chosen partly because of her commitment to personal righteousness. In fact, the Word makes it clear that there is a connection between personal righteousness and God’s decision to entrust great responsibilities to people. This also implies lackluster personal righteousness limits the effectiveness of the individual in their success.
“…let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2 NLT).
Anything less than focused commitment to personal righteousness will become a weight that stands in the way of our God-given assignment. And I’m convinced that if we would fight as vehemently for personal righteousness as we do for social righteousness, or pointing out the sins of the world, we would impact the world in much more profound ways!
2. Be Available
“For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God — and righteousness and sanctification and redemption — that, as it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the Lord’” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)
Translation – you don’t have to be great to do great things for God! The Message Bible has a good contemporary paraphrase highlighting this concept:
“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have — right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start — comes from God by way of Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31 MSG).
Notice here what Mary says of herself:
“For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).
“Low estate” means someone who is low in rank, considered vile, or who is humiliated. It describes a person who is down and out, rejected, despised, overlooked or simply not popular!
Although it can’t be proven, some people believe Mary was the least in her father’s house, as if she were under some particular contempt and disgrace among her family – like the Cinderella of ancient Israel. Regardless, it is clear that Mary felt there was nothing extraordinary about Mary! Yet, God chose her.
I remember a ceramic nativity scene my mother would place on a table in our living room every year. As a kid, I wanted to move the wise men across the room somewhere, recalling that Matthew says they arrived when Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were living in a house, which, I reasoned, must have been sometime after the birth of Jesus. The star wouldn’t yet be above the stable, since it moved along before the Magi. And I had heard at church that the stable was probably a cave, since barns, as we think of them today, were rare in ancient Judea. I may have been an odd child, but the details of the story are important to me. Jesus is real, so we ought to get His birthday right, I concluded.
I began to critique my mother’s creche, I had begun to memorize Bible verses at school, the first being 2 Timothy 3:16 – (All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness,) Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. If God breathed out every Word of Scripture, then every word is important. We’re missing out if we gloss over certain points or ignore how God himself tells the story. No matter how comfortable and familiar our nativity scenes may be, we’re only cheating ourselves if we hold on to tradition at the cost of truth.
Shepherds and Wise Men, Egypt and Nazareth! When I was a sophomore in school, my best friend and I were driving back to school from a semester break when we got caught in a terrible snowstorm on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Very quickly the roads turned treacherous, and the visibility grew poor. By the time the weather got really bad, we were too far from home to turn around. At that point the fear of being stopped we thought we might get stuck. At the moment, it made more sense for us to continue on our trip, even if we were moving at a snail’s pace. Before long, I could see the limits of the road only by the guardrails on either side of the highway, and I was doing my best to keep my car’s tires in the tracks left by the 18-wheeler in front of us. Eventually, though, the weather won. My small Chryler TLDR slid, spun, and then went off the road in one of the few places for miles without a guardrail. Actually, we made our unplanned stop in a small ditch just in front of a rest stop – the only one for an hour in either direction, given our limited traveling speed. We had to wait until the next morning for a tow truck to help us get back on our way, but my friend and I were both thankful to be out of the storm, safe and warm. I share this story to illustrate the grace of God-given guardrails. They can help us stay on the road, not only by providing us with visual markers as guides but also by giving us a gentle nudge if we begin to skid into danger. Without them. we might end up stranded on the side of the road and waiting for a tow truck. The nativity narratives in Matthew and Luke are like guardrails
Human Trafficking Survivor; God and Country, Without God There is No Country/ Judeo-Christian / America Belongs to God 