Pages

Monday, December 14, 2009

What if...

It's quiet...shocking,at 8:29 am. Millie is usually up and ready to go, but the Lord is giving me what I need...So I write, again, what I need.

As I have been thinking this Advent season, about the journey that Mary took, the logistics of the culture and details of her pregnancy and birth, I am seeing God in new places. Seeing how her trust in him, is more an inspiration to me than I realise.

As a woman, of such young age-I cannot forget, in that culture, the preparations that were made for the birth of a baby. Even if her own parents were disowning her, which I don't know whether they did or not, Elizabeth, she would want to help. She would be Mary's mother. But then, Joseph, deciding to be a man of moral character (which I'm sure made some snicker) agrees to go into Bethlehem for the census. She's in her last month...the ride/walk...and no one goes with them. Did Mary have to tell the women not to come with her? I couldn't have kept my mother away from my kids being born with a stick?! Did they sneak out in the middle of the night? Did they all go, but split up? Regardless, if the women who were set to be with Mary at the birth of her baby were there, no way, any of them would let her give birth in a stable, no way, they would have let her travel!!!

Mary, had enough trust and courage to do it alone. She didn't know what would happen, she didn't know how to do this...she barely knew her husband! How did it all go down? Did Elizabeth teach her what to expect and how to nurse? No La Leche league for her!

What if Mary had asked for what was rightfully hers? She had given up so much...her dignity, the name of her family-which back then...was everything, could she not have a decent birth?


And what if...what if Elizabeth thought too much of John's odd nature? Come on people, you know he always had to be a little off...but if he wasn't, would he have gone, into the wilderness? Maybe the oddities in our children are what God has placed there for them to fulfill? What if she wanted to medicate or analize the strangeness away...what if?

I question a lot and trust little. I am at the point that I recognize that. I am ready to step out except for one thing...what's out there? What else needs to be given up? ALL OF IT. So much that is "rightfully mine" is not promised to me. I believe it, I want to live it.

She lived a life of pain, I know it. How could you not when Jesus is your son? I can only imagine the difficulty. And yet...did she see her Messiah come? Did she know, like we think she did?

Tough thoughts I know, It's quiet now, but a cry is about to shatter the stillness, a cry that rocks the very framework of time, a cry that makes satan swallow hard and crack his knuckles and say "it has begun" (with a fearful arrogance that he actually thinks he has a chance...I think he still does think that...but we know differently) a cry that will be met by it's twin...later, of a much deeper voice, but the match to the cry of life, the cry of death. The quiet is about to be over.

No comments:

Post a Comment