During Advent, Tyra, Joshua, and I went to ImaginOn, the Children’s Theater of Charlotte, to see Barbara Robinson’s play, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.” One great scene occurs when the pageant director tells the nativity story to the
children, including “the horrible Herdmans,” the worst children ever. The little barbarians had never heard the story before, so they listened with wide-eyed wonder.
The story began, “Joseph and Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child. . .” “Pregnant!” yelled Ralph Herdman.
Well, that stirred things up! The big kids began to giggle and all the little kids wanted to know what was so funny. “I don’t think it’s very nice to say that Mary was pregnant,” Alice Wendleken stated. It sounded too ordinary; anybody could be pregnant. “Great with child” sounded better for Mary. “Besides, I’m not supposed to talk about people being pregnant,” said Alice.
It reminded me of years ago when my church youth group did the nativity. They centered the whole pageant on Mary’s pregnancy and Joseph’s response, and we were treated to a ten-minute tirade as Joseph sulked and fumed around the stage screaming, “Mary, how could you have done this to me?” We had never thought of the nativity as a soap opera before.
But Mary, that little girl of a woman who found herself great with child, may actually have been the first disciple. Because, though she didn’t fully understand all that was happening, she said yes to what God wanted to do in 
her young life. She responds to the angel Gabriel with the simple words, “I am the handmaid of the Lord.” In so doing, she becomes the model for all the rest of us who would be part of God’s work.
This little pregnant Jewish girl looks out across the Judean hills bathed in winter twilight and sings. Maybe she feels the child move within her as she hums the words, “My soul magnifies the Lord; he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has helped his servant Israel.”
For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given. And ever since, the world has never been the same.
