Living A Bold Mary Life

       The road was dusty and dark and long. Her belly, great with child, must have been filled with fluttering butterflies as she pondered what the future would hold for her son. HE would soon arrive, but there was no room…except in a stable.
       She was young and must have had great expectations, but there would be heartbreak …unspeakable, unimaginable heartbreak. And, yet she carried boldly through with God’s plan.
      During a conversation with my seven year old the other night, he asked me what it meant to be bold. I started describing what the word meant and included people I thought he would relate to as living bold lives. Thus, begun a long discussion of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
     According to Luke 1:28, Mary was highly favored by God, which we can assume from this that Mary had been obedient and completely devoted to God.
      After the Angel Gabriel told her that she would carry the Christ child, instead of questioning and complaining about the magnitude of what she was about to undertake as I would have done, she simply said in Luke 3:38, “I am the Lord’s servant, May your word to me be fulfilled.”
      Wow! Even with all of the questions that must have been running through her head, she was bold in her decision to be obedient.
      I know what I would have been thinking, “What will Joseph say?” “What will my parents think?” “What if Joseph says he won’t marry me?” “How am I going to raise the Savior of the world?”          Finally, I would have said, “Why ME?”
      But Mary, did none of that. She simply took her faith and her obedience and the Bible tells us she hurried to Elizabeth’s house where they rejoiced together.
      Mary was poor in material possessions, but she was rich beyond measure in her spirit. Imagine if we were all that bold in our spirit.
      I am just going to be completely honest in saying, that there is no way I would have ridden on a donkey for miles, nine months pregnant only to give birth in a stinky, germ infested stable. I am quite sure I would have demanded far more. But Mary wasn’t concerned with her own comfort. She only wanted to carry out what God had asked of her.
      Also, I cannot imagine many, if any men, who would have been willing to take a woman for his wife that was already pregnant by some unheard of means to be his wife. But Joseph, like Mary, was bold in his faith and took Mary anyway.
      God chose two ordinary people to parent the Messiah…the Savior of all mankind. And guess what? He still chooses the ordinary to do extraordinary.
      In my often questioning mind and wavering faith, I long to be bold like Mary…to believe without hesitation and to run with delight even when faced with what seems like an impossible situation. Oh to have bold faith like that!
       As the day we celebrate Christ’s birth draws nearer, I am eagerly seeking that bold faith…the kind of faith that allows God to do something extraordinary with an ordinary girl like me. I pray we will all seek that kind of bold faith.