In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
Luke 1:26–38
Well, that’s one way to find out you’re pregnant. Nowadays most women eagerly wait alone in a bathroom for the all-knowing pink strips to appear, or not appear, on a plastic stick they just peed on. However a woman finds out she is pregnant, though, it is always a heavy moment weighted with emotion. The thought that your body will be responsible for bringing an entirely brand new soul into the world is nothing short of incredible. As someone who has experienced this twice now, once when we were eagerly wanting a child, and once unexpectedly, I can say that both times the same sinking feeling swept over me, “A new person is about to depend on me for their existence. I’m not sure that I can do it.” It is, in fact, a weight that no woman is meant to carry alone, but with the help of the Father.
As I am writing this I am 35 weeks pregnant with our second baby boy. Right now he is flipping and kicking inside of me, proving his life and vigor even before his arrival. In just a few short weeks, likely around Christmas time, he will be in our arms turning our lives upside down yet again. Pregnancy is an incredible honor and an experience truly like no other, but more than anything, it is a sacrifice. Your body is quite literally not your own for 10 months (yes, 40 weeks is 10 months, not 9) and for years after birth. Then the pregnancy ends with a crescendo of physical sacrifice that is exhaustingly invigorating, bloodily beautiful, and traumatically miraculous. And if you ask any mother at the end of it all if it was worth it, they would say, “Yes. For the love of this baby, yes.”
We don’t know what Mary’s predisposition was before Jesus’ birth annunciation. Maybe she was eagerly wanting a child, or maybe she really wasn’t. She was very young and had no idea what experiences awaited her. Undoubtedly, she knew that she would be outcast for being pregnant and not yet married. Yet, her response to the angel is a humble one: “Let it be to me according to your word.” It is interesting to think that before the savior of the world could sacrifice his life for all humankind, he had to first entrust that this young girl would be willing to sacrifice herself in order to do so.
Motherhood is just another way that we die to ourselves for the sake of someone else. Mary’s sacrifice is compounded by the fact that the child she bears, the savior of the world, the long awaited one, decided to make his grand entrance in the form of a helpless fetus. There is no being quite so vulnerable as a baby. Yet, the one who needs nothing, the creator of all that has ever been, decided to come into the world completely helpless and dependent. The omnipresent came as finite matter in finite time. The omniscient came as a child knowing nothing. The omnipotent came as a powerless, vulnerable, naked infant. God so wanted to empathize with us that he turned his being inside out that he would be Emmanuel, God truly with us.
The example displayed for us by both Jesus and Mary in this annunciation passage is that love gets low. Love does not seek to rise above or ascend, it bends deep. Love calls us to die to ourselves that we might truly live. Jesus made this concept emphatically clear through his life and ministry, and at one point even says, “… whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25).
As we enter this Christmas season, may we follow their example. In what ways do you need to sacrifice your will, what you think might be best, for the love of God and others?
Emily Mayo is adjunct faculty for the Department of Art and Art History at Hope College.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.