By G. E.
Shuman
Today
I have been thinking about Mary, the mother of Jesus. As a protestant Christian, I think about her son
a lot, but not so much about her. Today
I have been thinking about what she went through for her son, and what she
might have been experiencing in those days surrounding the first
Christmas.
The Bible does not say a lot about Mary, and so the world
knows little about her. But she was a
real, live, feeling, caring person. She
was young. She was also without the benefit of history; to even be able to know
the whole story of the very history she was helping to create. Here's my idea of what she may have been
thinking on part of that first, very real, and rough Christmas day.
I imagine that Mary might have awoken
after a short evening's nap, to suddenly realize once again that she had just
given birth. Before rising she may have
looked up into the rough rafters of the shoddy stable in which she lay and
pondered exactly what was happening to her.
Barely more than a child herself, here she was, with an infant son
asleep in the stable’s manager, only inches from where she slept on the
hay-strewn floor. And this was not just
a child, but one miraculously born from her own young womb, from her own virgin
body. He was a son for which she had
been visited by the angel Gabriel months before, who had proclaimed to her that
the child within her would save His people from their sins.
Mary may then have been stirred from her thoughts as she
heard the baby move a bit, and whimper where he lay. Still unrested and uneasy, she was somehow
comforted by her tired young husband's loud breathing as he slept in the hay,
just to her other side.
Mary thought again of the angel's visit, and of their hard
recent trip by donkey to get to this town of Bethlehem, so that Joseph could
pay his taxes. She may have then
recalled the bumpy ride, the cold nights along the way, and her husband's
smiling glances back at her as he led the beast upon which she rode. She likely remembered the innkeeper's gruff
voice and awful smell, as he told them to stay in the barn if they had to, and
then slammed the door in their faces.
The Bible says that Mary later thought about what the
shepherds had reported. Their talk
included the angel which had spoken to them, and she might have wondered if it had
been the same angel, Gabriel, as had come to her on that seemingly long-ago
night. She may have well imagined the
heavenly host those shepherds described, and pondered their quick trip to this
very place, to see her sacred son. She may
have remembered, only briefly, that agonizing thought of whether Joseph really,
genuinely believed what she had said about the angel’s words, and of the bigger
fact, that she had never known a man.
Mary would have arisen to pick up her
tiny, sweet son from the manger hay, and then hold this most precious one to
her breast. How, as she did so, would
she not have also wondered and worried for the future of this nursing infant
child, this most Holy One, born in such a noisy, dirty place.
None of us can know what Mary
actually thought during that wondrous time… but think she surely did. The stable, the chilly air, the smell of
manure, the hard ground and the soft and dusty hay were real. So also, was her own body; real and still sore
and tired from childbirth. Mary certainly
considered that the greatest reality of all was that the child which she now
held and felt in her arms was none other than the very Savior of the world.
"And
all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the
shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her
heart." Luke 2:18-19.
