I’ve always felt that Christmas celebrations pay too little attention to the mother.
Perhaps it is an over-reaction to some in the world who have gone
too far in attributing power to her.
However it has happened,
she played a magnificent role in the coming forth of
the Son of Holiness
and my own celebrating and worshiping is enhanced when I think of her.
Most scholars believe she was young, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old.
Some have taken the verse,
“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19),
to mean that Mary was bewildered and didn’t know what was going on.
To me that is absurd—everyone around you has talked about the prophesied Messiah,
an angel appears to tell you that you are to bear the child,
and then you have a baby without ever knowing a man,
and you don’t know? Of all people,
Mary was the one who knew not just believed..
Instead to me the verse indicates that the events and happenings were very sacred
and so Mary kept the details to herself but pondered on them often.
Of all the women in the world, Mary was the one worthy and willing and ready
to mother the Son of God.
We are told she was a virgin.
The word originally meant a young woman.
But the definitions now include, “an unmarried woman devoted to religion,”
“a woman who has not had sexual intercourse”
and “a person who is inexperienced in a usually specified sphere of activity.”
And Mary fits all the definitions.
The birth we celebrate was to a virgin, innocent and pure.
Perhaps that is the most important symbol of the season,
for it is only in an innocent and pure heart that
Christ can be born again.
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