At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

Why me?

That’s what Elizabeth says in this passage. ‘Why me?’

Usually we associate this phrase with a healthy dose of self pity and depression but that’s not the tone of Elizabeth’s exclamation here.

Elizabeth cannot understand why she is so favoured. Why, out of all the women in the world that Mary could have visited at this point in time, was she chosen?

Well Elizabeth, we might think. You are cousins! There’s a sense in which visiting Elizabeth was the most obvious and sensible choice for Mary, having just heard some overwhelming news.

However, Elizabeth is making a good point. She’s a nobody. Why should she be favoured with a visit. Indeed, why me?

It’s very easy to get too sure of ourselves and think we are a somebody when we’re a nobody. Because the truth of the matter is, none of us are a somebody.

Only the baby in Mary’s womb was ever a somebody.

Yours a nobody,

Alison