Blessed Is She Who Believed

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!
Why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For behold, when the voice of your greeting came into my ears,
the baby leaped in my womb for joy!
Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment
of the things which have been spoken to her from the Lord!”
~ Luke 1:42-45 (emphasis mine)

I’ve read this so many times, but this time, as I read it in day 2 of my prayer journal, The Life of Christ, that one phrase stuck out to me: Blessed is she who believed.

This phrase tells me something, something about Mary that we need to emulate. Blessed is she who believed. How hard that must have been! First, to see an angel and actually believe the experience was real. Then to believe the thing he told her was possible, even though all logic, all laws of nature, the very order that God Himself had put in place said it wasn’t.

Mary believed anyway.

She believed that God could create life from nothing. She believed God would protect her long enough to see that life to birth, even though by law she could have been put to death. She believed that even if this baby who shouldn’t logically exist meant being cast out of her home, cast away from Joseph, that God would provide for them. She believed that the promise of God would protect, provide, and be the only thing she ever needed.

Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment.

Here is a mystery of our faith, of our Lord: God doesn’t need our belief to make His word happen. We see that over and again in the Old Testament. But ther’s still something about the combination of God’s word with our faith that brings about blessing, that creates good things from nothing.

By her belief, by her yes, Mary took hold of a blessing beyond what any other woman in history could claim. She became the living ark of God’s Living Word. She became the mother of God the Son. She became the mother of the church, remembered and esteemed by every believer throughout history.

Because she believed.
Because she believed, we can believe.

Elizabeth too demonstrates this crazy belief. She had first believed her own impossible motherhood–perhaps that’s what prepared her to believe Mary’s even less-possible state. Elizabeth is so fascinating, isn’t she? We know her husband doubted, but it would seem that she didn’t. She knew life would find her, and she knew her son was something special. Yet she also knew, the moment she heard Mary’s voice, that her child was THE child. Elizabeth began John’s work for him that day, before he was even born.

As I pondered this, I wondered how I could apply it to motherhood, Godly motherhood, in general. Maybe part of being a godly mother is believing in and acting on the callings of our children, even before they’re old enough to know it. Quite a thought, isn’t it? I don’t pretend to know what my children will end up doing, exactly. But then…neither did Mary and Elizabeth. Not exactly. They didn’t know the exact words they would say, the exact messages they would preach, the exact journeys they would travel. They only knew that they had been ordained by God to do His work.

Perhaps we and our kids aren’t all Johns and certainly aren’t all Jesus. But we’re all called to do our part for the Kingdom, including our children. Have I acted on that belief? Have I proclaimed enough that my children are children of the King?

Blessed is she who believed.

Blessed is she who believed in the purpose of her child–that can be said of both of these cousins. They, who would become the teachers of these two remarkable men. They who claimed a blessing not just through motherhood but through their faith in impossible life. They, who are among the most famous women in history, because they said yes.

Because they believed.

What are you being asked to believe today from the Lord?

This phrase struck me so much, I decided I wanted some visual reminders of it!
I designed the words with a beautiful floral background and then created some items for your desk and home. Each one has two color options, because I couldn’t decide which I liked best, LOL.

I hope you enjoy the pillows, blankets, wall art, and notebooks as much as I do!

(As a note, these are all created through a printing service that ships them directly from their facility,
so it will charge shipping costs automatically based on where they’re shipping from.
That means separate shipping from items I fulfill directly.)