Dear Readers,
This is a reprint of my last-year’s Christmas column. The reason it is here again is not entirely
because of my busy schedule or tendency toward laziness. The column generated many kind comments last
year, and I thought you might like to see it once more. Merry Christmas!
By G.E. Shuman
I have occasionally been accused,
(primarily by my wife) of not thinking like "other people." I'm not sure if this is true, as I simply
think as I think, and don't really know how other people think. I do know that I like to mentally experience,
or ponder the world around me. I
especially enjoy history and the things that have survived history and are
still with us. I think of things like
the old house we live in, and about the fact that these walls, and even the
nails that hold together the massive woodwork of the place, were right here,
exactly as they are now, on the day I was born.
Likewise, they were here, just as I see them now, on the day my father
was born. Things like that, thoughts
like that, ponderings like that intrigue me a great deal. The antiques around me as I write tonight,
including the house itself, are reminders that the days in which they were new
were just as real as today is. Each day
had weather and sounds and smells and situations and pain and joy and people
loving each other, and people hating each other. If this is not how other people think, well,
that’s just the way it is, and this is just the way I am.
Today I have been thinking, in my
probably odd way of doing it, 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 also one without the
benefit of history, 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 manger, 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 an angel 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. She thought again of the angel's visit, and
of the hard trip by donkey to get to this town of Bethlehem, so that Joseph
could pay his taxes. Mary could 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 she thought about what the shepherds had
reported. Their talk included the angel
which had spoken to them, and she might have wondered if it were the same angel
as had come to her in 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 remembered, only
briefly, that agonizing thought of whether Joseph really, truly 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 then 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 night, but think she surely did, and maybe not
like “other people.” The stable, the
cold air, the smell of manure, the hard ground and the soft and dusty hay were
as real as was the night itself. So also
was her own body; real and sore and tired from childbirth. She certainly considered that the greatest
reality of all was that child, which she now held and felt in her arms, none
other than the very Savior of the world.
"But Mary
kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." Luke 2:19.
2 comments:
What a heartwarming and inspiring post. I like the way you think. Your imagination and expression brought to life that time of long ages past. And I'm impressed by your sensitivity in considering how sore and tired Mary would have been from childbirth. Thanks, g.
Sweets,
Thank you so much for your kind comment. I think we often miss the truth of Mary's situation, and her sacrifice for us. She is not to be worshiped, but admired.
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