There's Something About Mary.

There really is something about Mary, isn’t there?

She’s your Lord’s momma, you ought to treat her with a little respect, a friend once told me.
Women have been treated unfairly, excluded, and banned by large segments of the religious world and Jesus’ momma is no exception. Yet, there is something special about Mary who was considered inferior and poor by everyone’s standard except God’s. Granted she did not make the most recent list of the Top 25 Evangelicals, but she qualifies as one of the greatest evangelists of all time, not for what came out of her mouth, but for who came out of her womb. The silent one speaks the loudest… and without words.

Hey Jesus, your momma just made the cover of TIME Magazine! Where are all your friends?

Mary has something to tell us about God and how to live, but are we listening?
She cooperated with God by saying yes and thereby held the Hope of Humanity in her womb. Think about this, the God of the universe entered into the world in the womb of a poor peasant girl who was nearly homeless. God enters the most vulnerable places of humanity. God doesn’t wait until someone qualifies for the cover of Time Magazine-- no, God comes into the unexpected and overlooked places in world and God impregnates the hopeless with hope. For it is often the vulnerable, weak, and poor who have lost it all and are willing to risk their very lives to say yes to God. Are we willing to risk our lives, our position in the church and society to say yes to God?

Unlike Moses and the prophets she did not proclaim a word of God, she was a bearer of the Word. She was the bearer of God to the world. She believed in Jesus long before you, the Top 25, or me. She was there with Jesus when the rest of the world had turned its back on him. While his side was pierced, her heart was pierced. I imagine she's by his side now with the "least of these" because she was one of them.

Mary did not believe what the world claimed about her, she believed what God claimed about her-- and so should we. She believed and risked her life for God… to hold the Child. Dare we enter that vulnerability; dare we believe and risk it all for God to bear the Child to the world.

There really is something about Mary. As Christians, may we follow her example and allow ourselves to be impregnated with God. May we say yes to God and be bearers of Christ in the world with the same humility and love of Mary. And the next time we bump into Mary, may we treat our Lord’s momma with a little more respect.