Sunday Afternoon Tea

But Mary treasured up 

all these things 

and pondered 

them in her heart.  

Luke 2:19

I love this verse, it may be the one I think of the most throughout the year (along with "He knows we are made of dust").  For different reasons, of course.  :)

I have had two seasons of Advent with an infant in my home.  Two cold, blustery winters sitting beside the Christmas tree holding a wee baby close, gazing at the lovely lights and ornaments.

I could not help but think of Mary as Christmas approached..  I pondered what it must have been like for her, for Joseph, for her mother and her father and her family and her neighbors.

I was raised in a small town.  People talk in small towns.  Gossip is brutal enough when it is false but who would believe in a virgin birth?  I love country ways and country people and have returned to them in my own life but one cannot lose themselves in the midst of crowds as one can in a city.

When we lived in Detroit, surrounded by millions of people, it was easy to blend in with the crowd... but not in Nazareth.  Certainly to those who wondered... if He were truly the longed for and anticipated Messiah then He would not be born among the animals.  Except... did she herself understand He was to be the Lamb who would give His life... someday?

What must it have been like for her as she hears of the glories and the sorrows which will befall her and the God child?   For she pondered not only the good and the precious in her heart but she could not avoid the warnings of Simeon and the knowledge of what lays ahead... not the exact events which will occur or the hows and whens of those events... but as a shadow over her days she knows something is coming... and she pondered it all.

I can see her, kneading bread and watching the little Jesus playing in the sand... the very dirt He created.  I can see her thanking God for the rain in due season and realizing the God she was thanking was manifested in the boy-child... the teenager... the young man... the One she loved as only a mother loves her child.

She said yes...to the path God asked her to walk... her entire life would be a wonderment of Waiting and Birth and Angels and Shepherds and Wise Men and Egypt and Gossip and Bewilderment and Joy and Pain and Water turned into Wine and the Cross and a Resurrection and an Upper Room and an infant Church.  All because she said... yes.

Would I say yes?  Yes to the path He has chosen for me to walk and yes to being His voice in a weary world and yes to following His ways and yes to raising children to know Him and yes to letting Him mold me and shape me into His image of who I can be... even though it hurts... a lot.  Yes...