How can this be?
Mary and the impossible word
The angel's words are world-altering, but Mary's first response is not triumph or even fear. It is disorientation. You will conceive and bear a son, and He will be the Son of the Most High, and of His kingdom there will be no end — and the young woman answers with the plain bewilderment of someone whose grasp of how the world works has just failed: how will this be, seeing I am a virgin?
It is an honest question, and she is not rebuked for it, not told to stop asking and simply believe. The angel answers — the Holy Spirit will come upon you — but the answer explains almost nothing of the how; it names the God who will do it and leaves the mechanism in shadow. And from inside that not-understanding, Mary says her yes: let it be to me according to your word. She does not wait for comprehension to consent. Then come the years, and Luke tells us what she does with all she cannot yet make sense of. She keeps these things, pondering them in her heart. Faith here is not a riddle solved. It is a bewildering word held, turned over slowly, trusted long before it is understood.
“How will this be, seeing I am a virgin?”
— Mary, to the angel — Luke 1:34 (WEB)
“Mary kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart.”
This is Disorientation at the threshold of a call that makes no sense — how can this be, given who I am and what I can see? The phase does not require you to understand before you obey. It asks you to bring the honest question, receive an answer that may explain little, and then hold the bewildering word in faith, pondering it rather than demanding it add up.
God's call on your life may make no sense, given who you are and what you can see, and your first response may not be triumph or even fear but plain bewilderment: how can this be? We often suppose that faith and confusion cannot share a room — that to follow God you must first understand what He is doing, and that bewilderment is a kind of unbelief to be ashamed of. Mary undoes that quietly. She asks her honest how-can-this-be, receives an answer that clears up very little, and obeys anyway. Her honest question was not the opposite of her faith; it was inside it, and her yes did not wait for full understanding.
You can consent to a word you cannot yet diagram, then keep the bewildering thing and ponder it in your heart through all the years it takes to unfold.
This is the difference between a confusion that paralyzes and a confusion that consents. Both stand before a word that makes no sense. But one waits, arms folded, for an explanation before it will move — and the explanation, with God, often never fully comes. The other asks honestly, hears that the God who spoke will see to it, and says yes to what it cannot yet diagram. Mary then teaches the long discipline that follows the yes: not demanding sense, but pondering — keeping the bewildering word in her heart through all the years it took to unfold. The call you cannot understand is waiting not on your comprehension but on your trust.
The Church can be handed a call or a season that simply does not fit its understanding of how the world works, a moment when the old certainties fail and the path ahead makes no sense: how can this be? Mary models the response for the whole Body. She asked her honest question, received an answer that explained almost nothing of the how, and said her yes from inside the not-knowing, then held the bewildering word in faith, pondering rather than demanding it add up. Wherever the Church can carry what it does not yet understand, trusting the One who spoke over its life, God can still do impossible things in a disorienting age, for with Him nothing will be impossible.
What cannot be shaken is the faithfulness of the One who speaks the impossible word — for with God nothing will be impossible. Mary's understanding could not keep pace with her calling, and it did not need to. The God who promised was Himself the steady ground, standing when nothing she grasped could hold it up.
- What has God spoken over my life that I cannot yet make sense of?
- Am I withholding my yes until I understand, or can I consent to a word I cannot yet explain?
- What would it look like to ponder the bewildering thing in my heart instead of demanding it add up?
Lord, You have spoken something over my life that I cannot make sense of, and like Mary I ask honestly how this can be. Give me her yes before my understanding catches up. Help me keep Your word and ponder it in my heart, trusting You long before I can explain You. Amen.