Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 60 · March 1
After the Angel Left
“And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.”
Picture a small house in Nazareth just after the angel has gone. A young woman is alone in the room, with nothing she can show anybody. "And the angel departed from her." Luke places that line straight after her yes. Nobody else in Nazareth saw or heard a thing. The angel had told her about her relative Elisabeth, but Elisabeth lived a long journey away in the hill country. Whatever Mary had, she had because of a conversation she could not prove had happened.
She had asked a question first: "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" About six months earlier, in the same chapter, the priest Zacharias asked the angel what sounds like the same question: "Whereby shall I know this?" He was left unable to speak until the promise came true, and Gabriel told him why: "because thou believest not my words." Mary asked how God would do it. Zacharias asked for proof that He would.
"Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." A handmaid is a female servant, and the word Luke uses is the female form of the word for a slave. It is the lowest title she could choose, and she chooses it for herself.
Lord, we would like the angel to stay. We say yes to You, and then we spend the next week hunting for proof that You really spoke, and we call the hunting faith. Give us Mary's sentence instead.
Be it unto us according to Your word. Let it be so in a house where nothing has changed that anyone can see. Let it be so on a morning when the only thing we are holding is what You said, because what You said is enough. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 60 is No Good Thing Lacking (Psalm 34:10).