What Simple Obedience Looks Like

“And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.” (Lu 1:38 AV)

Mary’s simple obedience without objection is amazing.  No wonder the LORD chose her.  He needed someone who would submit by faith with no objection in order to parent the Son of God!  Mary asked only one question of Gabriel.  “How shall this thing be seeing I know no man.”  This was not a question of submission.  Rather, a question of process.  Perhaps she was asking so that she could encourage Joseph to marry her sooner.  There is nothing in her tone of voice that would suggest she had one sliver of objection to the LORD’s will for her.  One realizes that giving birth was the sole definition of a woman’s purpose in life at the time of the LORD’s coming.  Ladies would stress rather deeply if they were married without children.  But this is being with child out of wedlock with no guarantees of how Joseph and society would respond.  Joseph could have put her away and she would have been known as a whorish woman.  All of Jewish society could have shunned her.  And, maybe they did!  All of that never entered the mind, or if it did, it was never voiced as a concern.  This obedience is the highest of all! No saintly role model ever did outperform Mary’s simple obedience.

When the LORD asks us to do something difficult, we hem and haw.  If we don’t have all the answers and there is a predictable hard road ahead, we question if the LORD really knows what He is doing.  We would have a  come-a-part if the LORD would ask us to suffer possible shame at the direction which He intended.  We would find any and all objections why it could not be done.  We would fire off one reason after another why it should be us.  Moses comes to mind.  That is our natural response.  We cannot speak.  We are not a natural leader.  We can choose someone better than the LORD can.

Mary utters the simple words.  Let it be done to thy handmaid as you wish.  What a statement of complete and unobjectionable submission.  Something we could all learn and apply!