WOMEN IN THE WORD: MARY

I’m not exactly an expert on women. God made the feminine gender different than men, so they remain a mystery to me.

Men sweat … women glisten.

Men wear pants … women wear dresses (Who decided that?)

On that note … Men jump into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt… women stare at a closet full of outfits and say, “I don’t have anything to wear.”

We’re different. God made us different.

But hear this! Women aren’t second-class citizens! They’re not weak. No man has ever endured the pain of childbirth. Left to us, we’d be extinct!

So, allow me to introduce you to some ladies of great strength and great faith, women used by God at important times in important ways. Let’s start with Mary, the mother of our Lord.

She was just a young Hebrew girl, probably in her middle-teens, innocent, but not quite perfect. 

She was just minding her own business one day, when out of nowhere, an “angel came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you’ ” (Luke 1:28). Mary was “favored.” The root of that word is “grace.” Mary was who she was by God’s grace! “The Lord (was) with” her… by grace.

When it was revealed to her that she, a virgin, would bear a Son, she could have politely declined. After all, bearing a child before marriage would have marked her as a scarlet woman. She had a choice: obey or rebel.

This is what makes Mary so magnificent. She didn’t decline. She didn’t rebel. She said, “I am the Lord’s servant … May it happen to me as you have said” (Luke 1:38).

Let’s learn to worship and sing with this remarkable young lady: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, because he has looked with favor on the humble condition of his servant” (Luke 1:46–48).

“… think on these things” (Philippians 4:8, KJV).