Be Still And Know

Luke 1:38 Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” We know the story of Jesus’ miraculous birth so well that we often have to work really hard to imagine how completely incredible this moment was for Mary. She was probably a teenager, and may well never have travelled outside of the rural Galilee region where she was born. The news that she was going to have a baby was shockingly at every level. She was a virgin, and having a baby was therefore a complete impossibility. But she listened attentively to the angel’s words and is assured that, crazy as this all sounded, nothing is impossible with God. Her response was extraordinarily impressive. She describes herself as the Lord’s servant and accepted the future that God had chosen for her. To be a servant would normally be seen as demeaning. We probably instinctively think of Downton Abbey, and the way that servants, living below stairs, were given all the heavy, dirty and difficult work to do so that a fe