Day 24: Mary

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” — Luke 1:38

In 2025, the seminary where I serve had to cancel our in-person Doctor of Ministry classes in Cairo. Our Syrian and Lebanese students could not travel due to Israel’s bombing of their nations and the closing of airspace. The bombing and war interrupted our lives and taught us the value of flexibility and resilience.

As I meditate this year on Christ’s incarnation, I find myself reflecting on Mary, the mother of Jesus. She deserves the first prize for flexibility and resilience. Throughout her life, Mary surrendered her own plans and embraced unexpected ones – plans that, in time, revealed themselves to be God’s divine design, established before creation. In doing so, she became a heroine in the story of God’s redemption.

Mary abandoned a young woman’s dream of a joyful wedding celebration surrounded by family, friends, food and dancing. Instead, her wedding had to be rushed and quiet, avoiding attention and gossip after she was found to be pregnant, even though she had not known a man.

Mary abandoned the comfort of having her mother nearby during childbirth. Due to Caesar’s census decree, she found herself giving birth for the first time in Bethlehem – far from home, mother and familiar support.

She abandoned her expectation to receive well-reputed relatives and neighbours to celebrate her firstborn son – a son who, being male, brought “double joy” under Jewish law. Instead, her visitors were shepherds – men considered ceremonially unclean by the Law of Moses, arriving directly from the fields in their work clothes. Later, she welcomed Magi – Gentile stargazers from the East who were seen by Jews as suspicious figures according to the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah.

Mary abandoned her desire to raise her son in her Jewish community in Nazareth. Instead, she and Joseph fled as refugees to Egypt, a foreign land with a pagan culture and unfamiliar language. They obeyed the angel’s command to leave though the angel did not say whether the move would be temporary or permanent. They fled amidst the lament and mourning of many parents burying their innocent baby boys.

The Bible calls Mary “blessed” and “highly favoured.” For two thousand years, every generation has honoured her – not only because she was chosen to bear the Son of God but also because she continually believed in God’s goodness, even when it came wrapped in confusion, fear or pain. The anthem of her life was “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.” Mary, the blessed, submitted to God’s will despite the repeated piercing of her soul by sorrow and uncertainty.

It is worth noting that, in Scripture, the sword is not only a symbol of pain. Paul speaks of the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Each time sorrow pierced Mary’s heart, her response was not despair but pondering all these things in her heart. She was anchored in God’s Word in her heart. How do we know? Because when Mary visited Elizabeth, she burst into a song – just ten verses long yet filled with over thirty references to Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, 2 Samuel and the Song of Hannah. Out of the abundance of her heart, her mouth spoke the Word of God.

God’s grace-filled guidance in Mary’s life challenges us to examine our own faith in God’s good sovereignty that sometimes calls us to abandon our own plans. The question is this: How willing are we to surrender our dreams and plans for God’s alternative plans – plans that often lead us down difficult roads but also into the heart of His story of redemption?

Likewise, how deeply do our hearts store and respond to God’s Word – the sword of the Spirit? Every time pain pierces our hearts like a sword, God’s Word has the power to fill the cracks with treasures, not by our strength but by the mercy of the God who is at work in us.