By Staff
Mary has been on my mind this month.
I imagine that scene in the stable so differently now. The cattle in the corner, the horses in their stalls, the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes - but there, too, are the dazed young parents, with only their faith to sustain them amid their fears as they looked to shepherd the Shepherd into the world.
If Mary had known what lay ahead - if she had foreseen the suffering her son would endure - would she have said yes to what the angel asked?
I believe so. The handmaiden of the Lord who said, “Let it be done to me according to Your word,” had faith that God's plan was best.
But what parent would trade the heartache, only to miss out on the innumerable joys that mark every day?
In Luke, Simeon prophesied that Mary's heart would be pierced by a sword. He meant it literally and figuratively, but Mary wouldn't have known until much later. Her sorrow must have been overwhelming.
Because her boy - the only perfect child ever born, no matter what some of us think - wasn't just the Son of God. He was her baby.
Surely he laid his head upon her shoulder, curled his fingers in her hair.
And wasn't his laughter the sweetest sound she'd ever heard?
As he grew, the gospel of Luke hints, she learned more about what lay ahead for him, but she also had to keep faith that God's plan was best, no matter what she would have hoped for her child.
Jesus' teaching in the temple at age 12 tested that faith, when an anxious Mary and Joseph searched for Jesus for three days and found him asking profound questions of the elders.
The Rev. Alecia Glaize - a minister and a mother - takes comfort in that scene at the temple as she parents teenagers.
For mothers, Mary is an example of selfless love; for all who believe, she is also an example of humble service to and faith in God.
By the power of the Holy Spirit, Mary bore a Miracle so that all of our own little miracles would one day be saved from sin.
For that, tonight, we rejoice.
Kerry Whipple Bean is publisher of The Brewton Standard. She can be reached at kerry.bean@brewtonstandard.com.