Can We Talk About Mary? -- Day 10 of Advent: Expectantly Waiting

"Inwardly this has been a very uneven week. As a whole, my end of the experiment has been a failure for most of the week. My physical condition and too many distractions have proven too much for me, and God has not been in the center of my mind for one-fifth of the time, or perhaps one-tenth."

That was Frank Laubach writing on June 1, 1930. We want to think people had life easier in (insert a year here). No matter what the year, people have always struggled with their wonderfully made but nonetheless breakable bodies. Some of us could be distracted on a deserted island; Laubach was distracted although he lived a lonely life, and most of us here in 2013 certainly have abundant distractions.

As we talk about physical conditions, distractions, and expectantly waiting, can we just talk about Mary for a moment? In the picture above, my youngest granddaughter has moved Mary and Joseph to the Little People house. Mary did not have such nice accommodations awaiting her at the end of her journey. (Although they are outside the house; maybe this shows no room at the inn?) And, I am not so sure life was so twinkly and lovely as the picture below shows.

Mary is, however, a great model for the themes of the Bethlehem candle: faith, love, preparation, expectantly waiting, and yesterday, I heard another theme: peace (which I thought was the fourth candle, but we'll discuss that in another two weeks).

Have you ever stopped to think of Mary's parents or her upbringing? I don't think I ever did until I prepared to write this blog. An angel comes, and she's scared and wonders about his greeting, but she does know it's an angel. She doesn't ask the angel what he means when he speaks about Jesus. She asks him a technical question: "Um, I have never been that way with [known] a man. How can this be?"

She does not question what or who the Holy Spirit is. She hears the explanation of the angel and says those quotable words: "Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word."

Mary has been brought up to know God and the history of God and His people. We have further evidence of this when she meets up with Elizabeth. She has been prepared for this moment even though she could not have known that it was coming to her. She has faith in God; she trusts Him; she loves Him. And, now she expectantly waits, as far as we know, in peace.

But, it could not have been easy. She gets sent off to cousin Elizabeth's house during the first three months of pregnancy, that is, when she is in the throes of morning sickness. Near the end of her pregnancy when she is huge and uncomfortable, she travels to Bethlehem where there is no room for them. She ends up giving birth, not in a comfortable stable like we are accustomed to seeing, but probably a cave-type of place for the animals.

And, don't even get me started on that verse in "Away in the Manger" where baby Jesus "no crying he makes." We might want to associate crying as a sin, but it's not. The shortest verse in the bible is "Jesus wept." Mary is young; she has a baby (totally human, totally God) who cries to communicate and she is in a cold cave stable with animals. Tell me that Mary does not have uneven days. But, she could say as Laubach wrote: "But today has been a wonderful day and some of yesterday was wonderful." Days not based on physical conditions or circumstances, but only based on drawing close to God. Expectantly waiting to see what next step to take, expectantly waiting to see what beauty might arise, expectantly waiting to see what God will do.