Highly Favored and Certain to Suffer

Pregnant Mary

“Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus.” ~ Luke 1:30-31 (NLT)

As I read this familiar passage in the Christmas story, a new thought struck me: Why did the angel Gabriel have to tell Mary not to be afraid? If she had found favor with God, and God was blessing her by giving her the great privilege of being the mother of Jesus, what would she possibly have to fear?

As it turns out, a lot.

What Gabriel didn’t mention, but what Mary knew all too well, was that hand in hand with this blessing would surely come an incredible amount of suffering. In her culture, becoming pregnant outside of wedlock, while she was only just engaged, was seen as a heinous sin that would bring with it enormous shame, shunning from her entire community, and the very real possibility of being stoned to death, according to Jewish law. If she did live to give birth and actually marry Joseph, he would also be scorned in the community for his wife’s suspected infidelity, Jesus would be seen and treated as an illegitimate outcast, and future siblings and the entire family would forever carry that badge of dishonor.

I believe one of the greatest miracles of the Christmas story is Mary’s response to this announcement, when she says, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.”

This is truly remarkable! I don’t think we appreciate the gravity of her words. Mary didn’t interrupt the angel with all the reasons why this wouldn’t work, or inform God of how she’d prefer things to play out, or go ask five friends for their opinions. She simply responded with a faith that accepted the worst and trusted for the best. In essence, this teenage girl said, “OK, I will submit myself to every bit of suffering that I know will come. I understand that I might actually die for this. And even if I don’t die physically, I realize this means the death of all my hopes and plans for how I wanted my future family to be. (Deep breath) Yes, I’m all in.”

As I read her words again, it occurs to me that this is essentially the same courageous response of every young woman who has an unplanned pregnancy and chooses life for her baby. Agreeing to go through a pregnancy and birth alone, and then become a single mom, is nothing short of miraculous. It is always a heart-wrenching, fear-inducing, death-to-self and death-to-my-dreams decision. As naive as she might be, a young woman always understands she is signing up for suffering, sometimes more than she can handle. That suffering often includes ongoing financial pressure and insecurity, daily overwhelm and exhaustion with no spouse to give her a break, the inconsolable grief of watching her child grow up without the protection, presence and influence of a father, and the inevitable shame of knowing people are often judging her and making assumptions about how she “got herself” into this situation.

With this much suffering and grief, then or now, how can any unplanned pregnancy be called a blessing, and how can God convince any woman to sign up for this?

I think the answer lies in Elizabeth’s response when Mary shows up at her door shortly after the angel informed her of this news. Elizabeth told her, “You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.”

Being blessed hinges on our decision to believe God’s promise and purpose for us, at all costs.

This is it. This is our answer. It’s this simple and this challenging. We are blessed when we believe the Lord will do what he says. Even when people are whispering behind our backs. Even when others are harassing us or shaming us or even trying to kill us. Even when none of our circumstances give us reason to hope. Being blessed hinges on our decision to believe God’s promise and purpose for us, at all costs. Knowing that she had found favor with God, and hearing that this was God’s plan for her changed everything for Mary. It gave her a courage and sense of purpose that couldn’t be shaken, even by all the forces that would come against her now and in the years to come.

Throughout history, God seems to delight in choosing and using people like Mary. Why? Because faith is all she had to bring, and faith is what pleases God. Faith alone. Not being from a good family, or being financially successful, or being married or even producing children. Through this story, God makes it clear that what truly pleases him, what he values most, is our faith; our willingness to trust him and yield to his will in our lives. Hebrews 11:6 says, “It’s impossible to please God apart from faith.”

In God’s Kingdom, everything we desire comes in the opposite way the world tells us to get it: Honor comes through humility, peace comes through submission, joy comes through suffering, and the fullest life comes only through fully dying to ourselves and our plans. Until we truly understand this, we will forever be unsettled, disappointed by people, frustrated by circumstances, and fighting against all undesirable outcomes in our lives.

Somehow, as a poor teenage girl from a nowhere town under Roman oppression, Mary grasps and radically lives out this countercultural truth of Christianity: We can be chosen and highly favored by God and at the same time certain to suffer because that’s where God shapes us and draws near to us, and there’s a purpose and a reward waiting that is greater than we know.

This Christmas, where is God asking you not to fear, but to respond in faith and submit to his plan and the suffering that is sure to accompany it?