Monday, 24 December 2007
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Mary's Misery
I think what we celebrate with soft lights and warm thoughts - that first Christmas - was absolute misery for Mary and Joseph. Not only are they under a cloud of suspicion due to Mary's pregnancy, but they have to travel to Bethlehem while Mary was apparently 9 months pregnant. I've heard it is about 100 miles from Naz to Beth. Are you kidding me? 9 months? The passages make it sound like her water broke just as they are entering Bethlehem. First of all, Mary must have been in dire straits sitting on a freakin' donkey while 9 months pregnant. I've never been pregnant, but can I ask the mothers out there - isn't that one of the worst positions to be in? Wouldn't Mary be beside herself with physical exhaustion after this ordeal? Then there's the emotional stress. "Where can we go? Nobody is letting us in. Please God!" What is Mary's reward for staying alive this far, getting to a stable? Childbirth! No sign of any midwife, just a clueless husband. Can you imagine how unsanitary the whole thing was? And does it end with the birth? Does God grant them a season of peace? No, they then have to make a last-minute escape from Herod's baby-killers. To Egypt. How many hundred miles is that? Can you imagine walking that far? OK, enough. I've made my point.
Why did God bring it about this way? Why? Hadn't Mary and Joseph been through enough just to endure the suspicions of all of Nazareth? Why did God have to add Navy Seal training at the end of the 9 months? I have no idea why. But we've all been there to some degree. We've all asked, "WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO HARD?" We all have our trials, some available for all to see and some privately endured. And just when one thing is resolved another thing seems to round the corner. Like a boxer struggling with all his might to stand up after being knocked down, only to receive another volley of blows to knock him down again. And Mary's life at the end of Jesus' life was just as difficult as his beginning. Such anguish.
I wonder if it's this way because if it weren't hard it wouldn't be based on faith. If things made just enough sense all mankind, or at least a much larger proportion, would come to faith. But God never seems to give us just enough sense. It just never gets very clear. We can't walk by sight, because our sight gives us little to go on. After all, faith is being sure of what we HOPE FOR and certain of what we DO NOT SEE. What sense could Mary have seen in it all? We need to be careful when we say to God, as she did, "May it be to me as you have said". If Mary proves anything its that being favored by God just might mean being pushed beyond the limits of our emotional, physical or spiritual health. We, like her, can do little more than ponder all these things in our hearts. But the answers probably won't come on this side of the river.
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Comments (2)
I'm glad you found the gory, masculine side of Christmas, Dave.
On the other hand, Dave, maybe we've seen too many Christmas pageants?
1. It probably wasn't winter.
2. "Everyone was being enrolled" : not only were they not alone, they probably had traveled with a big, fun family reunion, much like when they went to the temple when he was 12.
3. Joseph was probably the only one who knew the baby wasn't his - that's why it was such an agonizing decision - he was hiding Mary's pregnancy behind the likelihood that a betrothed couple took advantage of their "legally married" status to make a bit of hay. If he had divorced her, then things would have gotten really difficult!
4. The manger area was probably very dirty, but there were probably lots of people staying there, and other women to help out. They weren't the only ones who were having trouble getting rooms - picture the neighborhood around a big festival, when people are parking their cars in nearby driveways, tenting in people's yards, sleeping anywhere a blanket can be put down. In fact, since it was Joseph's home town it may have been his family that couldn't make room - but offered the barn with the other young people and teenagers.
5. Donkey? There was no donkey mentioned, though Mary probably would have been glad to have one.
6. She'd already been back and forth once - she must've been a hardy girl indeed! It was evidently part of their lives to hike it back and forth to Jerusalem for the festivals. While it would have been hard, it would not have been as if you or I attempted it.
That's all not to say they were not humble people -- but it's important that we think in terms of a loving heavenly Father providing what they needed, just as he does for us. Anybody besides me been really grateful for a mattress in a garage?
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