But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. (Luke 2:19, NIV)
Mary is pregnant.
Guys, some of you may need to talk to your wife about this. You know, the mother of your children. The one who endured.
If the nine months of COVID restrictions seem like an especially long time, it may be a good thing to reflect on what it means for a woman to carry a child. It may be the most human of all things, coming as it does with the full range of sickness and anticipation, discomfort and dreams. And amazingly, most women who do this once choose to do it again. To women who have carried a child, 2020 is pretty average fare.
So to say that Mary is pregnant, which often is lost in the sugar-coated story arc of the Christmas season, is to say that this woman knows. No matter how highly your church’s traditions laud her as the mother of Jesus, what that meant in the days before his birth was that she was tired and pained and beyond ready. And quite honestly, whether she rode a donkey (the Scripture doesn’t tell us this) or walked, her willingness to journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in this state is nothing less than Olympian.
So what does Mary know? She knows what waiting is like. And she knows that God is there in the waiting. But we shouldn’t say this only in the present tense, where she has the advantage of eternal perspective in the presence of the Lord. Mary knew this then, when she sang her Magnificat and when she began to assemble the scrapbook of her heart, the meditation and memory Luke called her treasuring and her pondering (Luke 2:19, 51).
Thinking about God is never wasted time. And thinking about him in the midst of a long-term challenge may be the best spent time of all.Here we are, nearing the end of a most unusual year. We’re ready for the enduring to cease and the realization of something far better to begin. It will be a bit longer yet, we are told. And maybe this is good, because maybe we need first to spend some time treasuring and pondering.
Thinking about God is never wasted time. And thinking about him in the midst of long-term challenge may be the best spent time of all. In our time, surrounded as we are with various academies of atheism, people are encouraged to dismiss God because of the troubles they see around them. Scripture’s poets and prophets could never have imagined this; consistently, their troubles caused them to ask all the more, “Who is this God I worship, and why is he doing what he is doing?”
This particular Christmas season, as you are communing with Matthew and Luke, you may gain much by sitting down with David and Jeremiah, too. These were men who understood the pain of pregnancy, that long season of challenge when relief and joy were yet to come. They lived in it, they thought on it, they prayed through it, and they emerged all the more stunned by the wonder of God.
Suggested reading: Psalms 18 & 40; Jeremiah 20:7-18 & 31:14; Lamentations 3:1-33
—
Jeff Hopper
December 15, 2020
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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