Following Mary's lead in saying yes to God

One of the great joys of pregnancy is imagining what that life growing inside of you might actually turn out to be.

Will her hair be blond like mine was when I was a child? Will he get that cute dimple from the Smith side of the family? What will his personality be like? Will she love basketball like her daddy, or will she pick up Mama's tennis racket? Will she be artistic and creative, or will she excel in math and science? What shape will his life take? What vocation will she choose?

During those months, as the belly stretches and the little movements inside strengthen and sharpen, there's so much mystery about who that little person will become.

Maybe that's why I have come to love that powerful contemporary Christmas song by Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene, "Mary, Did You Know?":

"Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water?

Mary, did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?

Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?

This child that you delivered will soon deliver you.

Mary, did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?

Mary, did you know that your baby boy will calm the storm with his hand?

Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?

When you kiss your little baby you kissed the face of God?

Mary, did you know? "

Since carrying and birthing children of my own, since my life has been turned upside down by those little beings that started out inside of me, since reveling in the mystery of who she and he will become, my heart has turned to Mary.

I long to ask Mary the same question as the songwriters: "Mary, did you know?"

Mary did know something about the child growing within her. The angel told her that he would be God's Messiah, the one who all of Israel had been waiting on.

But when Mary said yes to that angel, did she have any idea what his life would really be like? Did she have a clue about what she would have to endure as his mother? And if she had known the whole story, would she still have said "Let it be with me according to your word?"

With all of the questions that must have been whirling around in her head, Mary simply said, "Here I am. Let it be with me."

Walter Russell Bowie wrote, "The reason why many souls stop short of what might have been their experience of God is that they are halted by that 'How?' ''

All of this must have seemed impossible to Mary. She faced a choice to say yes to God's call to a very special service or to walk away from it, based on very little explanation. It took tremendous faith and courage to get past the "How?"

This is how Mary said yes to God:

"Yes, I will bear the humiliation and scorn that may come of bearing a child before I am married.

Yes, I will risk the opinion of Joseph, whom I love.

Yes, I will rear the child Jesus.

Yes, I will suffer the misunderstandings that are sure to come being the mother of this itinerant evangelist.

Yes, I will stand at the foot of the cross, grieving over the death of a dear son."

We never quite know what we are getting into when we say yes to God. But the truth is that at any moment, any one of us could give birth to some mystery who will change the course of history. We only need to be willing to say, "Let it be with me."

The Rev. Julie Long is associate pastor and minister of children and families at First Baptist Church of Christ in Macon.