Mary, Did You Know?

"How can this be?" Mary asked the angel, 

"since I am a virgin?"

The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come

upon you, and the power of the Most High will

overshadow you.  So the holy one to be born will

be called the Son of God."

Luke 1:34-35

Imagine:  you are a 15-year-old girl living with your parents, engaged to be married to a kind, stable, older fellow, when your room is suddenly filled with light, and a strange being proclaims that God is honoring you above every other woman on earth by causing you to become pregnant with a male child.  What would your first comment be to this amazing news?

Mary's was a question:  "How is this possible??  I've never been with a man.  I am a virgin."  Of all the things she might possibly have said, Mary takes the practical approach:  Wait a minute - we have a problem here - it takes two to get pregnant!  Conventional wisdom would certainly agree with that thought, but this was no conventional messenger, and his reply is astounding:  "You, Mary will be the mother.  The Holy Spirit will be the father.  The child will be born holy.  He will be the Son of the living God."

To my knowledge, there has never been another child of whom it could be said that they were born "holy."  But then, there has never been another child whose father was a member of the Godhead.  Did Mary understand all of this?  Did she realize that she was going to give birth to the Messiah?  How much of this unbelievable story could she comprehend, much less believe?  Buy Mary is a young woman of simple yet strong faith, and her reply to the angel is said without hesitation.