Each year as Christmas draws near I feel connected to Mary, mother of Jesus. Twenty three years ago I was expecting a baby too, and he was due on December 25th! As Christmas approached I waddled around, getting ready for the festive season. My enormous belly made it difficult to eat and sleep and I was also keeping up with a toddler. Because I’d already given birth, I knew what lay ahead. Even for a well-fed woman with a supportive husband and all the help I needed, giving birth was challenging. For Mary, becoming a mother was much more difficult, and the pregnancy and birth was just the beginning of the challenge! This Christmas, let’s look at why God chose a woman like Mary to do the hardest job of all.

God Chose to Be Fully Human

Have you ever wondered why Jesus chose to be born to a woman, instead of simply appearing to us? It is central to Christian teaching that Jesus was literally born human, just like you and me. In God’s wisdom, He reduced himself to a position so far below his own stature, that Paul called it making himself “nothing.”

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant…

Philippians 2:6-7a

Being human was an important part of God’s plan to become one with the people He had made in his image. Together, his life and death allowed us to not just know God personally, but also to be redeemed by him. But from God’s view, becoming human was no simple matter. As the creator, God was obviously familiar with the mechanics involved in being born as a human child. Jesus would start out life as a cell so small, he really would be virtually nothing. Implanted in the bloody lining of a woman’s womb, the tiny cell developing into the Son of God would divide countless times to grow into a human form.

Making the First Human Connection

Surrendering eternal awareness, Jesus would start out like a normal baby. Inside his mother’s body, eventually Jesus would sense light, sound and movement. He would feel his mother’s heartbeat, and swim around in the fluid produced to cushion him. Opening his eyes, he would see the outside world as a rosy glow. As he bumped around in his mother’s belly, Mary would sense his movements. She would form a strong bond with this growing child long before anyone else. But Jesus was also forming a bond with his mother. His first deeply intimate connection with a human being began when Jesus experienced the same joy at the sound of his mother’s voice that all babies feel. After the birth, her face the one he was closest to his, and they formed an instant bond as God intended.

God created women to instinctively care for their children. So when God chose a woman to care for him, He knew that from early in the pregnancy Mary would prepare for his arrival. After the birth, Mary’s hormones would make her alert to her baby’s sounds and needs. She would soothe him to sleep and walk the floor with him at night when he was sick. She would care for him at the expense of her own needs. Of course God himself was protecting Mary and the growing baby inside her. But God was also saying yes to being a vulnerable baby who needed care. In submitting to being an infant, Jesus became the weak one, with Mary as the strong one. I marvel that God, knowing all the details, would make this choice.

An Ordinary Girl with an Extraordinary Call

Having chosen to enter the world as a baby, Jesus could have chosen a different woman to be his mother. If he had wanted a more comfortable time on earth, he could have been born into a powerful, wealthy family. In choosing Mary, Jesus made the poverty of Mary’s life his own. Growing up in small town Galilee, Jesus lived modestly and worked hard like all his family. I’m sure Mary did everything possible to give a good life to Jesus. But an ordinary life was all she could provide, and this was what God chose. This modest life was another way that Jesus revealed the love of God for people. As Paul said, he took the lowest position, even taking “the nature of a servant.”

Have you noticed that God seems to choose ordinary people for extraordinary jobs? Jesus attracted fishermen and other people of humble means, many of them from Galilee, like him. Even when Jesus drew disciples in the cities, they were usually people from the edges of society. Tax collectors and sinners followed him, and the elite of society accused Jesus of guilt by association. They called him “the friend of sinners” (Matthew 11:19), but Jesus was not offended. He embraced it. Being the friend of sinners was why he came into the world. He chose us in all our problems and struggles. So it fit in perfectly that God chose an ordinary woman like Mary.

God Confronted the Taboos Around Women

A major way that Jesus changed the world was in his association with a woman’s body. Much has been made of the Old Testament regulations surrounding menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth. Some think that God decreed that women’s bodies are impure or unclean by nature. Addressing those rules would take a big diversion, so I won’t do that here. But one thing we can say clearly, is that whatever the taboos around a woman’s body and blood, they have been completely de-stigmatized by Jesus’s choice to be born of a woman.

When women menstruate or give birth, their bodies follow a natural pattern designed by God. If that creative choice by God is not enough to prove that God sees women’s bodies as perfect and functional, then being implanted and born from a woman’s body certainly does. Women are not dirty, and their bodies are not dirty. In choosing to be born of a woman, God gave all women great honor. It is one of the ways that God’s plan for people brings oneness between men and women, as well as with God.

God Chooses Women for Big Challenges

When God chose a woman as his way of entered his creation, He communicated a powerful message to the world. Mary did a great job of mothering Jesus, caring for his every need and giving him a start in the world. But her role in the salvation of the world is multi-faceted. From considering God’s choice to incorporate women in the salvation plan of all humankind, we can bask in the honor that God gave to all women. As the first and last humans to faithfully serve Jesus, women have shown themselves to be capable of the hardest things. It’s a joy to serve the God who loves us so much.

This Christmas I’ll be hanging up a little painting of Mary and Jesus, and looking back over some old journal entries I made about Mary’s motherhood journey (and my own!) It’s a special time of year to consider why our Saviour was born, and also to think about Mary and the kind of woman she was. As women who follow Jesus, we need courage like her! I hope this Christmas season gives you many reasons to celebrate your life as a woman of God. The biggest thing we celebrate is the love our God displayed when He chose to become one of us!

Would you like to find out more about what it takes to be a woman who follows God, all the way? Go here or an article about the courage of godly women leaders.