Mary the model believer

Across various church traditions, Mary has often been held up as the model believer. Here, when the angel Gabriel reveals to her that God has chosen her to bear the long-awaited Messiah, we catch a glimpse of why this is so. Mary does not put on a show of false humility and declaim her unsuitability for this great role. Nor is she a check-your-brains-at-the-door religious fanatic - she is aware that the situation will look a bit suss and has the temerity to question the angel: How will this be, since I am a virgin? (Read: I may be an uneducated, hitherto unremarkable, young Jewish girl, but even I know how babies are made!)

But when Gabriel informs her that with God all things are possible and cites Elizabeth's pregnancy as contemporary evidence of a similar miracle of the womb, Mary shows humble submission to God even if not all her questions have been answered: I am the servant of the LORD; let it be to me according to your word.

In case it has all been a dream, she goes to check out Elizabeth. Thence issues the Magnificat, in which she praises God and shows that she gets enough about Him to joyfully serve Him in what she does know, not being hung up on what she (still) doesn't (like the how can this be question). I find what Mary does with her questions an encouraging model to follow - ask God, listen to the answer, submit to God's will regardless of whether the answer is fully satisfactory, check out corroborating evidence if relevant, praise God.