‘Yes to Shame and Glory’: Mary as exemplar for us today
A classic from Christianity Today, originally published in 1986Â
‘Yes to Shame and Glory Mary is a model of openness to the power of God’. Luci Shaw | posted 12/19/2006 08:57AM
At Christmas, most Protestants are tolerant enough to allow Mary limited access onto our greeting cards and into our crèches and carols. But the rest of the year she is a victim of simple neglect. In bending over backwards to avoid certain excesses of veneration, we have abandoned Mary to a kind of evangelical limbo.
Yet it could be different if we avoid both extremes, and look at Mary clearly enough to see the woman shown us in the Bible. Not only was she a simple mortal, unpretentious enough for us all to identify with, but she nudges our self-centered “me generation” toward the path of the God-centered, the faithful, the obedient. If we read Mary into each one of the Beatitudes, we will not falsify her character.
From Mary we may also learn about the courage to say yes, especially as we are faced with challenges from God that may seem to us nearly as impossible or outrageous as the angel’s demand.
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