Courageous Vulnerability
Thursday, December 4, 2025
I am a Christian because of women who said yes.
—Rachel Held Evans, Wholehearted Faith
Public theologian Rachel Held Evans (1981–2019) reflects on how Mary’s yes was pivotal to the Incarnation.
I am more aware than ever of the startling and profound reality that I am a Christian not because of anything I’ve done but because a teenage girl living in occupied Palestine at one of the most dangerous moments in history said yes—yes to God, yes to a wholehearted call she could not possibly understand, yes to vulnerability in the face of societal judgment, yes to the considerable risk of pregnancy and childbirth… yes to a vision for herself and her little boy of a mission that would bring down rulers and lift up the humble, that would turn away the rich and fill the hungry with good things, that would scatter the proud and gather the lowly [see Luke 1:51–53], yes to a life that came with no guarantee of her safety or her son’s.
By becoming human, God encourages us to honor the vulnerability of our own lives:
It is nearly impossible to believe: God shrinking down to the size of a zygote, implanted in the soft lining of a woman’s womb…. God inching down the birth canal and entering this world covered in blood, perhaps into the steady, waiting arms of a midwife. God crying out in hunger. God reaching for his mother’s breasts. God totally relaxed, eyes closed, his chubby little arms raised over his head in a posture of complete trust. God resting in his mother’s lap….
I cannot entirely make sense of the storyline: God trusted God’s very self, totally and completely and in full bodily form, to the care of a woman. God needed women for survival. Before Jesus fed us with the bread and the wine, the body and the blood, Jesus himself needed to be fed, by a woman. He needed a woman to say: “This is my body, given for you.”…
To understand Mary’s humanity and her central role in Jesus’s story is to remind ourselves of the true miracle of the Incarnation—and that is the core Christian conviction that God is with us, plain old ordinary us. God is with us in our fears and in our pain, in our morning sickness and in our ear infections, in our refugee crises and in our endurance of Empire, in smelly barns and unimpressive backwater towns, in the labor pains of a new mother and in the cries of a tiny infant. In all these things, God is with us—and God is for us. And through Mary’s example, God invites us to take the risk of love—even though it undoubtedly opens us up to the possibility of getting hurt, being scared, and feeling disappointed.
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Emmanuel in the Ordinary: Our Yes to God’s Nearness
A Companion Devotional to “Mary and the Power of Yes”
Reflection
If Mary’s yes opened the door to the Incarnation, our own small yeses keep that door from closing. The miracle of Emmanuel—God with us—didn’t end in Bethlehem. It continues in every moment we choose vulnerability over safety, presence over distance, trust over control.
Consider this: God chose not merely to visit humanity but to need us. Before Christ offered himself as bread and wine, he needed Mary’s milk. Before he could save the world, he required a woman’s courage to say yes to a call she couldn’t fully understand. This is the scandalous beauty of the Incarnation—God made himself dependent on human cooperation.
The God who meets us is not distant or abstract but draws intimately near, honoring us by seeking to understand our stories. Just as God asked Hagar “What’s your story?” in the desert, God comes to satisfy our deepest need, embracing us with a love that will never let go.
God in the Unlikely Places
God reveals himself in unexpected locations—not just in sacred spaces but in wilderness places, in desperation and wandering. Mary encountered the angel in her ordinary bedroom. The shepherds received the announcement in their fields. God pitches his tent next to ours, moves into our neighborhood, enters our waiting rooms and traffic jams and dirty dishes.
Whether we face sin and failure, grief and despair, or simply seek meaning and purpose, God embraces us with forgiving, comforting, and encouraging love. No place is godforsaken when God chooses to show up there.
This Advent, ask yourself: Where do I least expect to find God? Your commute? Your difficult conversation? Your fear? Perhaps that’s exactly where Emmanuel waits.
Our Turn to Say Yes
Mary’s yes wasn’t a single moment but a lifestyle—a continuing wholehearted consent to God’s will unfolding in unexpected ways. She said yes at the Annunciation. She said yes at the manger. She said yes at the cross, becoming mother to all of Jesus’s disciples.
Your yes matters too. Not because you can save everyone or change everything, but because God invites you into co-creation. You cannot say yes for all humanity as Mary did, but you can say yes in your small corner of the world. You can:
- Say yes to noticing the overlooked person
- Say yes to honest vulnerability in a relationship
- Say yes to the risky work of love
- Say yes to showing up even when it’s inconvenient
- Say yes to God’s call even when you can’t see the outcome
Each time we die to self and consent to the challenges of love, we rise to new life in the same surrender, completing our own baptismal journey.
Prayer for Today
God of the ordinary and extraordinary,
Thank you for drawing near—for choosing not to stay distant but to dwell with us in our most vulnerable moments. Thank you that you trusted yourself completely to human care, that you needed us then and invite our participation still.
Give me Mary’s courage to say yes to your mysterious callings. Help me believe that my small yeses matter, that my willingness to risk love opens space for your kingdom to break through.
Teach me to find you in unexpected places—in my wilderness, in my waiting, in my weakness. Let me pitch my tent next to yours, knowing you have already moved into my neighborhood.
May I trust that vulnerability is not weakness but the posture of incarnation. May I remember that you, the Almighty, chose the low way—power in humility, strength perfected in weakness.
This Advent, make me attentive to where you show up and brave enough to say yes.
Amen.
Questions for Reflection
- Where in your life right now is God inviting you to say yes to something that feels risky or vulnerable?
- What “unlikely places” in your daily routine might God be trying to meet you that you’ve been overlooking?
- How does knowing that God chose to be vulnerable and dependent change the way you view your own weakness or need?
- If Mary’s yes opened the door to salvation, what doors might your small yeses open for others?
