At Just the Right Time

A reflection for Advent on the motherhood of Elizabeth and Mary

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

(Luke 1:39-45 ESV)

In the very first chapter of Luke we meet two pivotal women, through whom God declared and raised up His salvation for His people: Mary and Elizabeth. In verse 7, we learn Elizabeth is barren and advanced in years. Mary, on the other hand, is a betrothed virgin (v. 27), old enough to know where babies come from but too young to already be married, likely around the age of 14. God promises through His messengers that both of these women will conceive sons, and God faithfully provides that each carry their sons to term, they are born, and they grow to adulthood to radically change the course of human history. Mary and Elizabeth’s pregnancies run in parallel and in stark contrast. One women’s biological clock was ticking to a halt, the other’s had just begun. One became pregnant before wedlock, the other spent many marital years longing for a child. One struggled with infertility, and one seemed to be too fertile. Mary and Elizabeth have come to represent to me the opposite ends of women’s personal struggles revolving around becoming a mother. One patiently waiting for her turn to be a mother, the other suddenly and caught unaware. One I can relate to, the other I can only speculate to her thoughts and feelings from the experiences I’ve watched my friends endure. But both their stories should hold such abundant hope for all women and people.

I have met Elizabeth. I’ve drank coffee with her. I’ve exchanged countless emails with her. I’ve cried over her and for her as she explained to me the heartache, the doubt, the bewilderment, and worst still the resignation of infertility. I have heard Elizabeth’s story told many times through wonderful women of God who strongly desire to become mothers. Elizabeth’s is their story. Elizabeth knew the desperate longing and hopeless emptiness. Elizabeth watched her friends and family members birth child after child while she wondered if it would ever be her turn. Elizabeth endured the whispers and insensitive comments around her that constantly reinforced the voices in her own mind that said she was doing something wrong, she didn’t have enough faith, she wasn’t taking every possible step to conceive. Elizabeth lifted countless prayers to her Heavenly Father only to feel as if the ceiling deflected her pleas and sent them back to her falling in pieces. Elizabeth felt as if she carried with her not the ability to create life but rather carried death itself. 

The suffering Elizabeth endured was so great that she, like many women I know, waited to let others know she was pregnant (Luke 1:24). Perhaps she couldn’t bear to have the gift she had finally been granted to be questioned by the same people who had cast on her such scorn and therefore waited until her body showed undoubtedly that the Lord had at last answered her prayers. Scripture isn’t specific about Elizabeth’s struggle, it doesn’t need to be. Enough women have lived Elizabeth’s story. Sarai (Gen 11:30), Rachel (Gen 29:31), and Hannah (1Sam 1:2) to name a few. Many more women I adore. However, scripture is clear on whether God heard Elizabeth’s prayer:

After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, “Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.”

(Luke 1:24-25 ESV)

Elizabeth response echoes that of Rachel (Genesis 30:23), a mother of a patriarch, a sister who endured childlessness. The conception of John the Baptist from a barren and broken woman shows that it is God who ordains life, not man. The freedom from shame and guilt that conceiving a child God gave Elizabeth points to the freedom God gives all of us in Christ.

And then there’s Mary. Elizabeth had the husband, the household, and the nursery waiting to be filled. Mary was just newly a woman. She had an arranged marriage but otherwise no immediate plans for motherhood. She likely looked on motherhood as an eventuality, something that would follow her marriage to Joseph, something that was still some time off and nothing to worry about now. Maybe Mary was more that just an unexpected mother. Maybe she was reluctant to the notion of motherhood. Maybe Mary desired to be a mother insomuch as that is what Godly woman did, but maybe she wasn’t the first to volunteer to watch the children. Maybe she had passions and hobbies that didn’t revolve around rearing offspring. Maybe she wasn’t the most nurturing and maternal teen girl. Maybe Mary was like me. 

Scripture doesn’t give great detail about pre-pregnancy Mary. We can know she was related to Elizabeth (Luke 1:36); she was from the tribe of Judah (Luke 3:23-38); and her parents likely feared the Lord so to arrange her marriage to a righteous man (Matthew 1:19). After birthing Christ, she goes on to have other children (Mark 6:3) and she eventually becomes a widow in need of an eldest son to care of her (John 19:26-27). She showed unimaginable faith at Gabriel’s announcement in Luke1, but is still human as she sets out with other sons to interrupt Christ’s ministry (Mark 3:31-35). One way I know for certain that Mary and I differ is that I have never quietly stored up pondering in my heart (Luke 2:19) but rather spill out the clamor of all my musings like a waiter dropping tray of bussed dishes. Nevertheless, Mary likely did not think herself ready to be a mother and certainly wasn’t planning on being pregnant at that time. I also had not thought myself ready for motherhood and made no plans to pursue it.

When I felt God first place the call to motherhood on my heart in the immediate upcoming season, I panicked. God didn’t quite send an archangel, but He was very clear. I summoned as many objections to the idea of me as mother as I could. I’m selfish; I’m immature; I’m disorganized. I like things clean and orderly, not covered with peanut butter as I presume all children are all the time. I barely manage to adult myself, how could I possibly manage to raise a completely dependent little human? My objections revealed my fear, my sinfulness, and my lack of trust in God. To top it all, I became seized with guilt. Here I felt God leading me into motherhood and I myself utterly reluctant, when I knew so many women from personal experience and from scripture who had longed to be mothers. I was asking God, “Why me?” when I knew so many to ask, “Why not me?” 

In my fear and guilt, I turned to God’s Word. I read of Sarai, Rebekah, Rachel, (the matriarchs were all barren), Manoah’s wife & mother of Samson, Hannah, and Elizabeth. Women who cried out, whom the Lord heard and gave children, whose children grew to be men of valor through whom God brought about His redemptive purposes. I knew I too needed to be obedient to God’s call to become a mother, but I desired to be obedient much more than I actually wanted to be a mother. Was there a woman in scripture who was obedient to motherhood but had not been crying out to be a mother? And then there was Mary. 

And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

(Luke 1:35-38 ESV)

In May of 2015, God spoke through a seminar my husband and I went to that we should pursue adoption in the next season. Unfortunately, unlike Mary, I initially responded like Moses, Jeremiah, and Peter, “Not me Lord!” This year has been a year of wrestling. Me wrestling with God; me wrestling with myself; me wrestling with the reality of motherhood. But then Lord has remained faithful through my objections and doubts. He has graciously listened to my fears and mercifully silenced them. He removed my heart of refusal and given me a heart of great excitement about becoming a mother.

Maybe you relate to Elizabeth’s narrative. You have known deep longing and and endless waiting. Maybe you identify with Mary, with an unexpected launch into a new season or undertaking in life that you don’t feel prepared for. The likelihood though is if you’ve spent any number of years on this earth, you’ve felt the fear of both. God’s faithfulness arrives for both of them. For Elizabeth God’s faithfulness hears her daily uttered prayer and casts off her shame. For Mary, it’s God’s promise to provide and sustain her through the motherhood He’s calling her into. Their parallel pregnancies, though very different contexts, show God is faithful in both in a season that seems too long delayed or in a season that seems to have come too soon. God sustains through both. He is good in both. Furthermore, Mary and Elizabeth both became pregnant at just the right time. We can rest knowing that God’s timing will be just right for us as well. Christ entered our broken world and the darkness in our lives at just the right time, as Paul assures us:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

(Romans 5:6 ESV)

Likewise the author of Hebrews extols us to preserve as he quotes Habakkuk 2:3:

Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For,

“Yet a little while,

and the coming one will come and will not delay;(Hebrews 10:35-37 ESV)

Waiting isn’t easy; being thrown head first into something we don’t feel ready for is terrifying, but good and heavenly Father uses both to grow and extend His Kingdom and our faith. If you’re feeling caught in either extreme this advent, know that you have both of these women’s narratives to testify that God is with you; Emmanuel has come and will come again.