When Gabriel announces to Mary that she is to bear a son, there is a choice for her to make, said Barbara Brown Taylor (in her sermon “Mothers of God,” published in Gospel Medicine):

whether to say yes to it or no, whether to take hold of the unknown life the angel held out to her or whether to defend herself against it however she could. . . . Like Mary, our choices often boil down to yes or no: yes, I will live this life that is being held out to me, or no, I will not; yes, I will explore this unexpected turn of events, or no, I will not. If you do say yes, you can take part in a thrilling and dangerous scheme with no script and no guarantees. You can agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own body.

Stained glass window at the Taizé Community’s Church of Reconciliation in Taizé, France, from the second half of the twentieth century.