Luke 1:28
28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Sometimes we have a portending that things are going to get interesting in our lives. I imagined it’s nothing like what Mary was facing though. Imagine, an angel shows up at your front door and says “congratulations, you’ve been blessed with an event that will have you ostracized and your reputation destroyed, even though you’ve done nothing wrong. As a matter of fact, you’ve been chosen because you’re pure.”

I’m betting her response was something along the lines of modern day “what the heck!” Mary had a choice, to believe or not. Having an angel sitting on your couch, saying “trust me, it’ll be alright”, must be pretty awesome and convincing. It appears it did make it right, because Mary never wavered, never doubted.

How are we like Mary? We haven’t had an angel come to visit us and tell us we’re about to conceive the human form of the Lord. No, we had the Lord come and live among us, die for the forgiveness of our sins and leave us with an earth shattering call to be transformed, to believe, to turn our life and the world upside down.

So, Mary got an angel and believed. We got God and doubt it. Mary’s life was about to be “ruined” according to the social norms of the day, yet she went forward with strength and conviction. We get called bigots, homophobes, racists, narrow minded by some shrew screaming from a tower of intolerance and we cower, we run for cover.

There’s something wrong with our reaction, something seriously wrong.

Christ came to us in love, and left us with a legacy of love, a radically different world view that said love matters most. Love your God, love your neighbor. It’s time to be as secure as Mary was, to be bold, to be fearless, to take the power of God’s words and live them in our lives. Really freaking live them.

So, think of Mary when you want to cower in the face of some idiot who’s too ignorant to explore. Think of Christ when you walk past the beggar.

Take action, be like Christ. Believe as Mary did when entertaining special visitors. Enjoy His visit.