Have You Ever Wondered?

Have You Ever Wondered?

Christmas is a season of warmth and love, friendship and joy. A time when loved ones gather, gifts are exchanged and good food enjoyed. One Christmas, however, I felt like a beached whale, I was nine months pregnant and, being in Australia, there was more warmth that just to do with friendship and love. It was hot and it was summer and I was feeling it. The month of December with it’s flurry of seasonal activities  from the outdoor community Carols by Candlelight on a warm summer’s evening, to church programmes, to the shopping for presents, the wrapping, the decorating of the tree and to the writing and sending off of many cards, had kept me busy. I had had some complications in my pregnancy, which required constant monitoring. There I was on Christmas Eve, at the hospital, linked up to the CTG having the baby’s heart beat and movement monitored. As I lay there Braxton Hicks contractions rhythmically came and went. The nurses laughed with an assurance that Christmas day would find me in labour for sure. I was all the more determined to enjoy Christmas with my extended family and not find myself in hospital that day. Thankfully, my daughter waited a few more days before making her glorious appearing in this world on December 28. 

Being heavily pregnant in the month of December turned my mind often to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Although the real date of Jesus’s birth is not known and it definitely wasn’t December, the celebrations around me brought me to thinking deeply about this woman of God. Who was she? What was it like to be chosen by God to give birth to the Saviour of the world? We realise by the culture of the time that Mary would have been in her mid to late teens. What would it have been like, as a young woman, engaged to an older man, to have an angel appear to you announcing you will have a baby but not his baby? How would I have reacted? Mary obviously had a very deep relationship with God, an experience in surrendering to God’s will. She replies to the angel who has explained to her how she, a virgin, will conceive with these words, "I am the Lord's servant… May your word to me be fulfilled.” ( Luke 1:38). It makes me wonder. How surrendered am I? How much faith do I have in God’s word in seemingly impossible situations?

After the angels’s visit, Mary, in haste leaves Nazareth and journeys on to a town in the hill country of Judea to be spend time with her cousin Elisabeth. She is gone for three months and returns pregnant with the world’s Redeemer. How do you explain that to your friends? How do you explain that to your fiancé? Who would believe you, a poor young woman, anyway? What would it be like to endure the snide remarks as your pregnancy became more and more known? How many friends did she lose? Did she feel alone at the well? Did she feel the loss of her support group? Did she feel the sting of a tarnished reputation? Through a miraculous dream her fiancé, Joseph, became her closest friend, a believer, a support for her. They were together, alone in a sea of people, filled with the closeness of God and the wonder of new life within. Matt 1:24 “And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife.”

What was it like to be nine months pregnant and travelling the eighty miles from home to Bethlehem. The Bible doesn’t mention she rode a donkey. It is only a tradition that suggests she did. The journey takes four days for a young healthy man. What was it like to walk along heavily pregnant, day after day. There are no public restrooms, no relaxing seating along the way, just a never ending trail of dirt to walk on. There are no comfortable hotels to stay in over night. How did it feel to sleep on a mat on the hard ground? What did it feel like to walk on and on? If she rode a donkey, how comfortable would that have been anyway? Yet Mary never complains. She never feels sorry for herself. What kind of woman is she? Luke 1:46 gives us a glimpse into her attitude “ "My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” Do I glorify God and rejoice in Him, even in difficult times? 

How tired would I feel after travelling for days and days at nine months of pregnancy? How relieved would I feel to make it to Bethlehem? Mary and Joseph are unable to find lodging. No doubt Mary was experiencing contractions already. How would I feel being homeless in a town full of people I didn’t know and in labour? Was she panicking? Did she wonder where God was? How stressed did she feel? Did she feel relief at the sight of a cave that housed animals? How would I like to give birth in a dark, smelly environment surrounded by cattle and sheep? Who is this Mary anyway? What a woman of great faith she was Luke  1:45 "And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.”

This Christmas as you see the nativity scenes of Mary holding a wrapped baby Jesus in her arms, as you walk by them in shops, rush past them on billboards, see them on cards, churches, and even imprinted on the Australian Christmas stamps, why not pause and wonder? Who was Mary? Why did God choose her to be the mother of the my Redeemer. Can I have the relationship with God of the joy of full surrender that was in Mary’s life? This Christmas choose joy, inner joy, choose peace, inner peace and choose Jesus, the hope of the world.

Luke 2:10, 11 But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”