Out Of Control - Mary, Betrothed

Matthew 1:18-25

Would you want your parents to pick the person you’d marry? We hear about it happening in other cultures, and we think, How old fashioned! How unfair! Yet Mary and Joseph most likely had an arranged marriage.

As our Christmas story begins, the two are “betrothed.” Betrothal in ancient Israel was different from our engagements of today. It was generally a contract between families, often with money changing hands. When a couple was betrothed, they were legally bound together, although they did not have sex until after their wedding. If something went wrong, couples couldn’t just break off the betrothal. Only divorce or death could end it.

We don’t know if Mary knew Joseph well or was happy that he was chosen for her. The choice of her husband was probably beyond her control. After her betrothal, she found another thing she had no control over. She was pregnant by the Holy Spirit, chosen to bear the Son of God.

Joseph could have divorced her. She was pregnant and not by him. That would be legitimate grounds for breaking a betrothal, and he was planning to do so, quietly, respectfully—until the Lord told him what was really going on. Then he willingly entered into the situation, as Mary had. Both of them acknowledged that events were spinning out of their control and they could only trust God for the outcome.

What do you do when things are truly out of your control? When someone is ill and his life is in the hands of the doctors, not yours? When you lose your job because of layoffs? When your child heads off to college, and you aren’t in control of where she goes or who she hangs out with anymore?

One option many people choose is worry, but what good is that? Mary gives us an example of courage in the midst of downward-spiraling circumstances. She heard the angel’s announcement that her life would change forever, and she said, “Let it be.” She trusted that God would be with her through it all. And he was.

Before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

Matthew 1:18-19