Why? Why? Why? I am reminded of those days when we waited as anxious parents for our children to start talking in English. It was not long before we would be bombarded with the endless “Why?” questions about everything. Daddy, “Why is the sky blue?” I must confess that it became a little frustrating at times. I must also confess that I did not always know the answer! Yet those questions were a wonderful opportunity to be challenged to grow and learn. It can be easy to stop asking “Why?” and take things for granted and stop learning, I wonder if the old Christmas story is one of those areas for us. So why Mary?
The simplest answer is that we do not really know for certain. Why did God choose Mary over all the other potential young girls? This is one of those areas that God has chosen not to reveal to us. But it is an area that we can get some ideas from what we know about the promised Messiah. First, she would need to be a descendant of Abraham. And we know that the Messiah would be in the lineage of David. This means that the Messiah would need to come from the royal bloodline. These are technical qualifications and I am sure there are others like the geographic birthplace of Messiah. There are also practical reasons such as it seems probably that God would choose God honoring parents. Now this is not a requirement but it makes practical sense. We would think that the parents would need to be open to being used by the Lord. The privileges of serving God are never easy and always come with challenges. Joseph and Mary faced the challenge of parents that bore a child out of wedlock. They would have lived with the scorn and ridicule of others. A third thing we would expect is God uses people that defied the cultural expectations. Everything about the birth of Christ went counter to popular practices. He was born to common people in an uncommon way. The birth was announced to the humblest of people and then recognized by foreigners. The child was not born in a palace nor was he fed with a silver spoon, yet He was God incarnate.
So why Mary? Why? Why? Why? It was because that was the way that God chose to work. The birth account should encourage us to allow God to work in our lives in ways that run contrary to our thinking so that His will can be done. The Christmas account also reminds us that nothing happens by coincidence. It is God choosing to work in us and through us in an unexpected way and that is will not be easy!
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (Galatians 4:4-5)
-Pastor Joe Parkinson