The Handmaid of the Lord

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This is Day 30 of my 40 day Lenten Blog.

By the beginning of the first century, the Jews were a conquered people. No one likes to be conquered, but it was especially difficult for those who believed themselves to be the chosen people of God, His special nation. And to be conquered by pagans who worshipped all sorts of imaginary idols and demons and the planets and stars themselves was a nearly unbearable humiliation for the Jewish people. But they held on to their hope. They had hope in God, and they had hope that He would soon send the Messiah, called Christ in Greek, who would save the people, throw off the chains of oppression, and rule the entire world with an iron rod.

The truth is that most of the Jews expected the Messiah to be a warrior king like David, a great general who would defeat the Roman occupiers in battle and then lead the Jews to conquer the world for themselves. After all, the Messiah was to come from the line of David. God had promised David that his offspring would sit on the throne of the world forever.

But as we saw in the beginning of this story of salvation God does not do things as humans do things. God likes to take the weak, the forgotten, and raise them up through His own glory. The Messiah was no different. In His wisdom God decided to bring the Messiah to Earth not as a powerful warrior, but as the weakest of all humans--a baby. And this baby would not be born in a palace, His birth announced by trumpets and fanfare. No, this baby would be born to an obscure family in an obscure place.

One day, the angel Gabriel appeared to a teenaged girl named Mary who was a descendent of King David. But she was not rich; she did not live in a palace. She didn't even live in Jerusalem. Mary lived in the small nothing town of Nazareth in the backwater province of Galilee. She was married to a man named Joseph, though most translations refer to her marriage as a betrothal. That is because in ancient Jewish culture a marriage was broken into two parts. The two were married and then the man left for a year to establish his house and prepare for his bride and then the second part when she moved in with him. Mary and Joseph had already accomplished the first part of the marriage and were thus married in the eyes of the law, but she had not yet moved in with him.

The angel said, "Hail, Full of Grace, the Lord is with you." Mary was obviously surprised and and wondered at the greeting. But the angel told her not to be afraid. She would conceive and bear a son and she was to name Him Jesus. The angel explained that her son would rule over the throne of David and His kingdom would have no end. In other words, Jesus would be the Messiah.

But Mary was a bit confused and responded, "How can this be for I have not known man?" The angel asked, "Is anything impossible for God. Even now your cousin Elizabeth is with child in her old age."

So Mary said, "I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me as you have said." This is an amazing statement of faith and obedience. Basically, I am God's slave, and will do whatever He commands. And this was not a simple command. If Mary became pregnant, Joseph would certainly think she had committed adultery. The punishment for adultery was stoning. She was risking not only shame, but death! But she trusted God and obeyed Him.

Mary's husband Joseph was a good and righteous man and when he found out that she was pregnant, and knowing the baby was not his, he decided to "divorce her quietly." In other words, Joseph decided not to publicly shame Mary and accuse her of adultery. He knew that she might be stoned to death had he done so, and he did not want that to happen. But by not publicly accusing her, he led everyone to believe that the child was his. Therefore, when he divorced her, everyone would think that Joseph was abandoning his wife and child. It would thus be Joseph who would be shamed as everyone would consider him what we could call today a deadbeat dad. But an angel came and spoke to Joseph in a dream and told him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because the child had been conceived by God.

Meanwhile, hearing from the angel Gabriel that her elderly cousin Elizabeth was pregnant, Mary rushed off to help her. The journey was about 80 miles and would have taken a few days, so this was not like driving across town to help your cousin. When she arrived, Elizabeth was excited to see her and said that her baby, who they would name John and would later be known as John the Baptist, had leapt in her womb at the sound of Mary's voice.

And Elizabeth was incredibly humble. She said to Mary, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. What have I done that the mother of my Lord should visit me?"

But Mary, ever humble, did not glorify herself, but gave all glory to the Lord. "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has seen the lowly position of his handmaiden, but from now on all generations will call me blessed for the great things the Lord has done for me."

And Mary remained with Elizabeth for about three months. Then she returned home to prepare for the coming of her own child, the Messiah, the Word Made Flesh.

Next: The Word Became Flesh.

R.C. VanLandingham is a Catholic homeschool dad just trying to make it through this life and into the next! He has written a Christian children's fantasy series about a boy named Peter Puckett!