For This House
Every Season. Every Space. All for Him.
Every Season. Every Space. All for Him.
Maybe it’s the extra fact that I know it’s a little boy that I’m carrying as I also watch our 2.5-year-old son grow and learn every day, but I find myself leaning more and more into Mary’s narrative and all the feels that she must have carried.
This Christmas season, I am six months pregnant with our second baby boy.
And although I’ve got months to go yet, I’m comparing my own body consciousness as this baby develops and requires more of me, to the personal thoughts and social anxieties Mary must have gone through in her very unique situation.
I’m finding the Christmas story coming to life in a whole new way because I’m experiencing the real-time joys and concerns that Mary may have felt, helping me to walk a mile in her shoes, if you will.
Mary and Joseph were married quietly so they didn’t attract the extra attention of the public regarding the timing of Mary’s immaculate pregnancy.
Have you ever planned a wedding? Do you recall all the social, societal, and familial norms that you have to consider? Things were different back then of course, but in some ways much, much more difficult to sway from the status quo–in a life or death sort of way.
God held Mary in his arms so closely during that pregnancy, I’m sure of it.
There are so many changes that happen during pregancy that look different for every woman, but just imagine Mary experiencing the worst of what you’ve felt yourself or heard friends express about their worst pregnancy symptoms. Does it bring Mary to life in your mind a little more?
Then contrast that with the community gossip she must have had to endure…
And compliment it with a deep, profound faith and trust in God’s plan.
What a beautiful example. Mary actually could have lost her life over this in their societal regulations, but she and Joseph both had the faith and trust in God’s plan over their life as told to them by the angels.
The long and arduous journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have taken at least a week, they say, traveling by foot.
In present day, they encourage you not to travel as your due date nears, and yet Mary and Joseph made their way over 93 miles (just over 150 kilometers) on foot, only to arrive with no place to stay.
We all know how the story goes, but even though Joseph was returning back to his lineage home for the census, he wasn’t able to call upon family for a place to stay, and they were left to search out room and board on their own. Even among the animals.
Nevertheless, Jesus was born to humble beginnings with his mother and father (and any other stable hands present taking care of the animals) and lain in a manger–the food trough–for a cradle.
Don’t you just want to sit down with Mary someday in heaven and hear her birth story with Jesus first hand? I’m so curious what her mental state was through all the ways her birth plan went awry.
After the birth, the Bible doesn’t tell us the list and lineage of family who all came to visit them after Jesus was born. There must have been plenty of Joseph’s family in the city of Bethlehm with the census on and all.
Nope–we hear about some random shepherds that saw the star and believed the message brought to them by the angels as well. And, through faith, they made their way to the babe to worship the newborn king.
Are you hearing this old story in a new way? Because that’s what I’m trying to get at here. This story is ridiculous and yet I’ve been listening and telling it like its totally normal for 30+ years now.
As it says in Luke 2:19, Mary treasured and pondered these things. She realized the weight of all that had happened and would continue to happen in her new life with Joseph and Jesus.
They were suddenly a little family, and not only was she to endure that steep learning curve of becoming a mother for the first time, but also an undertaking no mother has ever had to consider: how to be a mother to the Savior, the Messiah, Jesus.
And there you have it. The heaviest weight of the whole story.
How could that one thought transform how you look at your own children? They are not God of course, but they are made in his image.
How could that one thought transform they kind of mother you are? You are made in His image.
How could that one thought transform the friend, sister, and daughter that you are? Look around you–everyone is made in his image.
