Saturday, March 26, 2011

Did You Know Mary?


A young girl finds herself pregnant and not by the man she is betrothed to marry. She lives in a culture where the law demands she be stoned. She runs to an older aunt who understands what is going on but she may very well be the only one. When she returns home, her condition evident by now, the town is abuzz with the scandal. Her fiancĂ© considers putting her away quietly until he encounters a dream. Others thought him a fool and may have even taken their carpentry needs elsewhere. Fast-forward to Christ's birth, the proclamation in the temple and the flight into Egypt. Mary was far away from the scrutinizing neighbors but still had to ponder who this Child was. Her life would never be the same. Could she have struggled with what she may have expected from life? She and Joseph returned to Nazareth when Jesus was maybe 5 years old. By now, one or two brothers had been born. Her neighbors remember the circumstances of her first Son’s birth. Mary has to learn to live without their approval. Perhaps she was able to hang onto a close friend but the town never embraced her as their own.
There were probably many times she wondered at it all. She knew in her heart that Someone had orchestrated all of this and had a plan. The wondering came from what part she had to play. Who was this Jesus? How could this ordinary little boy be the Messiah? And was He? Had what happened those few years before been heartburn? In the dust and heat of the day, when it is so hard to believe, how do we? And does God forgive our doubts? Is the God they teach in synagogue the same One who allows His Son to be born in a stable?
Mary was never the same after the conception and birth of her firstborn. Nor did she ever escape the judgmental stares of her peers as her life progressed because no one really knew the miraculous mystery of His birth in her life before the Resurrection.
You and I find it easy to justify Mary's doubts. We find it hard to correlate her doubts to ours because her circumstances were thrust upon her by the Divine. He did ask, and she did say yes. In reality, He asks us every day. Will we allow the Savior of the World to take up residence within us and walk out our salvation in the Spirit? Things are never what they seem. Pharisees can always find something wrong because they think they can be saved by the law.

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