Mary's Reflections

Scripture Reading: Luke 2:1-20

Her body lay sapped of strength, her eyes were heavily closed, but her mind refused to give way to rest. She ached for her mother. She wondered if she yet believed her. She heard the labored breathing of the man sleeping a few feet from her. Only months before, he was little more than a stranger to her. She knew only what she had been told and what she could read in occasional shy glances. She had been told he was a good man. In the last days, she knew he was far more than a good man. No man, no matter how kind, could have done what he had done. She wondered how long it had been since he had really rested.

A calf only a few days old awakened hungry and could not find its mother. The stir awakened the baby who, too, squirmed to find His mother. Scarcely before she could move her tender frame toward the manger, He began to wail. She scooped Him in her arms, her long hair draping His face and she quietly slipped out of the gate. She sat down and leaned against the outside of the stable, propped the baby on her small lap, and taking a strip of linen and tying back her hair, she began to stare into His tiny face. She had not yet seen Him in the light.

She had never seen the moon so bright. The night was nearly as light as the day. Only hours old, his chin quivered - not from the cold - but from the sudden exposure of birth. His eyes were shaped like almonds and were as black as the deepest well. She held Him tightly and quietly hummed a song she had learned as a child. She had been so frightened of this moment. So sure she would not know what to do. She had never held an infant so small. And He was God, wrapped in soft, infant flesh. With bones so fragile she felt like He could break. She had pictured this moment so many times. What would the Son of the Spirit look like? She never expected Him to look so normal. So common. Must have been the part He inherited from his mother. She was so sure she'd feel terribly awkward. So afraid she'd drop Him. The Messiah. And God would be awfully sorry He had given Him to her. Instead, every fear, every doubt, every inadequacy was momentarily caught up in the indescribable rapture of a mother's affection.

She remembered asking Elizabeth things she dared not ask her doubting mother. Once when they were walking together at the end of the day, the wind blew her cousin's robes against her and, like a curious teenager, Mary tried her hardest to catch a good glimpse of Elizabeth's rounded middle. She, herself, had no physical evidence that God's promise was true but she had enough faith to ask endless questions. "What am I to do when He comes?" Her cousin's reply would remain etched upon Mary's heart long after He had saved the world. "He will tell you what He needs from you. Beyond what He needs, all He wants is for you to embrace Him and talk to Him." She looked back in His delicate face and watched Him closely as He seemed stare deeply into the moonlit sky. And she began to talk. "Sweet baby boy, do you know who Your Daddy is? Do you know Your name? Do you know why You're here? What do you see when You look out there? Can you see the stars? Do you remember their names? Do you think I'll do okay? Will You love me, too?"

A tear dropped from her chin to His. He yawned and made such a funny expression, she grinned, wiping her face on the yellowed rags she had draped around Him. The fussing calf had obviously found its mother. Not a sound was coming from inside the stable. The earth stilled. The infant slept. She held the babe next to her face and, for just a moment, all the world silenced to the breath of God. She closed her eyes and listened, stealing time like a hidden metronome. As high and as wide as she dared to think, she still could not begin to comprehend. She, a common child of the most humble means, who had never read the Scriptures for herself, was embracing the Incarnate Word. The fullness of the Godhead rested in her inexperienced arms, sleeping to the rhythm of her heart. This time she hummed a song she did not know. A song being sung by the choir of angels hovering over her head but hidden from her carnal senses. The deafening hallelujahs of the heavenly hosts were silent to mortal ears except through the sounds of a young woman's voice who had unknowingly given human notes to a holy score. The glory of God filled the earth. Heaven hammered a bridge. But one young woman sat completely unaware of all that swelled the atmosphere around her. A tiny baby boy had robbed her heart. "So this is what it feels like to be a mother," she mused. She crept back into the stable, wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in the manger. Just down the path, the sun peaked gently over the roof of an inn full of barren souls who had made Him no room.

© 2000 Beth Moore