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Faith. Purpose. Relevance. |
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The woman called Mary in the bible has two profiles today. To over a billion Christians, (mostly catholic), she is one of the most, if not the most important, person in Christendom. To the other Christians, (i.e. Protestants), she is – by virtue of the former fact – the most uncelebrated of all early Christians. But in the mist of this tussle of veneration or belittling, the real person naturally gets forgotten. Who was Mary and why was she chosen of all the women living then? Why was she called blessed among women while still barely into womanhood? Why was this Nazarethan lady called upon to fulfil a Bethlehemic prophecy considering that with God there is no respect of persons? With all that we’ve been thought since childhood Sunday school, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was because she was a virgin. You’d be forgiven, I say, but you’d be wrong. In Defence of the Fuss. Before I proceed, I’d like to explain why this Mary issue is worth wasting our (internet) time over. After all, the choice of the Messiah’s maternity was God’s problem, not ours; and it would seem an unnecessary bother to our already full basket of troubles to be asking uhm… intellectual questions. But shift the spotlight a little bit to Mary and you begin to get a better view. To Mary, Jesus was not just the fulfilment to a prophecy; to her he was more than a bouncing, Goddy, babe that she was expected to play with till his time for appearance came. To Mary, the maternity to the Holy thing was like her ministry, her calling, her service to God, indeed her destiny. Just as Moses in the wilderness, David in the sheepfold, and Joseph on his bed, so was Mary called upon by God to bring about a plan for Him. God is still very much in business today; he is still recruiting men and women to take care of the work of His kingdom on various fronts. And He is impartial in His recruitment; He is the One who impartially judges according to each one's work (1 Pt 1:17 NASB); and like a true businessman, he only recruits qualified persons. Résumé of a True Godmother. Here are a few factors in Mary’s life that I think are worth noting. I’ll begin with the readily obvious ones. Purity- That’s should be very obvious. After all, they don’t call her Virgin Mary for nothing. But I’d like to point here that her virginity was more of a reflection of an inward sanctification rather than some externalized, worked out, I-am-gooder-than-you thing. It is also important to point here that while virginity was to be a key factor in the Messiah’s maternity, it wasn’t her virginity that made her to be chosen. Remember, we’re talking of mainly Jewish Palestine 2000 years ago. With a few exceptions you can be sure that every Tom, Dick, and (even sinful) Harry then was a virgin. ˇ Faith – It is hard to underestimate Mary’s level of faith. It takes faith to accept that you are about to do what no other person in all human history has ever done. Even more importantly, it takes faith to believe that of all the, (seemingly better and more qualified), people there are, God decided to choose you. Hebrews 11:6 says without faith it is impossible to please God. And we all know that Mary was told that she was highly favoured. Zacharias had no faith (even though his was a simpler case by a long chalk). Mary had faith; Elizabeth knew that, that’s why she said And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord -Luke 1:45. [By the way, if you haven’t read our classic tale of Elizabeth I think you’re missing something. You can read it here]. Simplicity – this is not to be confused with the naivety, or stupidity that is referred to in the book of proverbs. Simplicity here means uncomplicated. Some people are too complex for their own good; they have their rules, their preferences, their ideas, their this-is-how-I-know-it-should-be-done mindset. These are the guys who would have half-guessed the angel’s message before he even started, (I say half because they’d never get to hear the whole message).
Emotional Stability -
But Mary kept all these things, and pondered [them] in her heart. Mary may have been one small meek lady, but she was not the type to go down under strain. She handled the great changes in her life pretty maturely; and she didn’t run to her mother or her neighbours to cry out her tale of wonders, she didn’t even tell Joseph about it. Only one person was told, and that was by instruction. For a long while, if not all her life, she had to endure the image that she got pregnant outside wedlock. But she was strong enough to handle it. And while I’m on that let me remind you that given birth to a baby while still a physical virgin isn’t one of the most painless things on earth – not to talk of the fact that she did it virtually alone but for an inexperienced man and a few commiserative animals whose manger she had borrowed. She was, as Kenneth Hagin would say, tougher than she looked. ˇ Responsibility- that’s where a few of us need some lessons. You see, divine as Jesus’s origin may have been, there isn’t any indication that he was pampered. He was known as the Carpenter’s son and indeed was himself a renowned carpenter. He was not allowed to laze at home because he was the son of God. He was the firstborn in the family and was treated so equally that his brethren were among the last to believe him. Sometimes we treat our ministry or calling like an egg or something. We will disagree with our spouses, ignore the children, abandon education, etc, because of ‘the work of God’. Not so Mary; she didn’t let her divine calling becloud her eyes. She was called to be a mother and a mother she would be. While I’m not saying she spanked him as a child, I don’t think Jesus had any doubt as to whether he’d be spanked or not if he erred. (I know your mind will go straight to the episode at the temple. That was a totally different aspect of his life; and both parties understood it to be so). ˇ Forward looking - Mary did not stay in her past. Her name Mary is the same as Miriam which means rebellion. Now why on earth would God want to use a person named rebellion for a task as sensitive as this? This is the Messiah we’re talking about here; surely He couldn’t have forgotten Lucifer. Want to be used powerfully by God? Learn to leave your past behind. There’re so many other things which I’d not be able to mention here for space; but I can’t go without mentioning that she was… ˇ Grounded in the scriptures– this is a very interesting observation since as a woman in that culture there was no demand on her to learn the scriptures. But she did anyway, that was why she had enough faith to grasp the essence of the task. The bible says as soon as she was greeted by Elizabeth she opened her mouth and spoke some of the deepest words ever said about the coming Messiah and the Jewish people that many a man could never have uttered. (Luke 1:46-55). She was a virgin, she was strong; but above all, she had understanding. (prov. 4:7) So here we have the detailed answer to the simple question, “why Mary?” Now to the next logical question: Why not me? God Bless.
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