What Mary’s Quiet Awe Teaches Us About Trust

Sometimes, life is just rather lifey.

The crisis comes one after another. Sadness surrounds us, and uncertainty creeps in. Whatever the situation, humans often find themselves searching for peace, hoping for an ounce or two of trust along the way.

In times like these, I tend to return to a scene between Mary and the angel Gabriel. When a most unexpected promise of a virgin birth happens, Mary’s quiet awe has something to teach us about trust.

How, then, can we emulate her faith in the midst of uncertainty?

Leave room for wonder.

In Luke 1:26-38, God sends the angel Gabriel to visit Mary, a woman who lived in the city of Nazareth.

As The Message relays, he greets her with the following:

Good morning!

You’re beautiful with God’s beauty,

Beautiful inside and out!

God be with you.

What, then, is Mary’s response when a real live angel shows up and visits her? Even though his words shook her, she left room for wondering. She didn’t high-tail out of the room, but she tried to figure out what the greeting might mean.

Sometimes, this is also our invitation: When the unexpected arrives on our doorstep, we’re invited into wonder as well.

However, as Tim Keller writes in Hidden Christmas, a bigger kind of wonder is also at play:

No one, however, can accuse Mary here of anything like “blind faith.” She does not say, “How wonderful. An angel is speaking to me!” No, the text tells us, “Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be” (Luke 1:29). The Greek word translated to “wondered” more accurately means “to make an audit.” It is an accounting word, and it means adding things up, weighing and pondering, and being intensely rational.

How might you wonder and add things up, weigh and ponder, and be intensely rational when life throws hard circumstances your way?

Don’t be afraid.

In the next part of the text, the angel reveals the surprise that will happen in the coming months: She will become pregnant, give birth to a son, and name him Jesus.

But that’s not all:

He will be great,

be called ‘Son of the Highest.’

The Lord God will give him

the throne of his father, David;

He will rule Jacob’s house forever—

no end, ever, to his kingdom.

When the angel says this, Mary responds by asking the simplest of questions: But how? How is this even possible when I’ve never even slept with a man? But how could this happen if I’m a virgin?

I imagine Mary’s eyes growing wide with perplexity as her shoulders shrug upwards and her hands drift open. But then I also imagine her returning to Gabriel’s words not to be afraid, for she has nothing to fear.

Perhaps, then, even if everything in her mind wants to run, we will remember how Mary remembered the invitation: “Do not be afraid.”

Consider these words from Austin Shelley, senior pastor of Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh:

When the fight-or-flight instinct gets the best of us and tells us to hunker down behind a wall of fear, I hope and pray that we will instead run with Mary to Elizabeth—to the arms of a faithful covenant community that will remind us of God’s many blessings and encourage us to turn again toward home, toward the face of Jesus in the faces of those who have fled for their lives, toward the one whose messengers almost always begin with “Do not be afraid.”

It makes me wonder how we, too, can heed the invitation not to fear, even in the face of a thousand unknowns.

Rest in awe.

In the last part of the text, the angel Gabriel answers Mary’s “how” question:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you,

the power of the Highest hover over you;

Therefore, the child you bring to birth

will be called Holy, Son of God.

Of course, the miracle of a virgin birth will happen through the Holy Spirit! To me, these utterings provide the biggest invitation to trust, both for Mary and for us as readers.

Here, Mary is reminded of her cousin Elizabeth – an eighty-eight-year-old woman who was six months pregnant with her first child. If God can do this, who’s to say God can’t do the miraculous in Mary’s body?

Mary’s answer to his words is simple and final: “I am the Lord’s servant. Let everything you’ve said happen to me.” An invitation to rest in awe, I imagine she’s left with more questions than answers. Still, she chooses to trust.

If you, too, are left with more questions than answers, consider this prayer from San Dieguito United Methodist Church in Encinitas, California:

Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with us in the sacred hush of this prayerful

moment, help us like Mary to treasure Your good news in our hearts. Slow us

down and give us a renewed awe and sense of wonder as we ponder Your goodness. Thank You for the gift of this still moment and the peace You bring to our lives. Amen.

Might you be given a renewed awe and sense of wonder as you ponder life’s circumstances, however challenging they might be.