When I look at most Christmas card pictures (or Christmas stamps) of Mary, I would say this is a woman who has it all together. All her hopes while growing up in Mom and Dad's household have been fulfilled.
Christmas cards tend to be scenes of perfection: perfect balance, composition, color, emotion (happy, joyful, peaceful or all three). To be sure, I wouldn't be excited to put a card up on my fireplace mantle that shows Joseph and Mary scroungy: shabby, dirty, sweaty, and unkempt from traveling to Bethlehem. Let's add in the way most of us women look after we have given birth. Like everyone else, I want beauty. I want wholeness, happiness, joy, peace, and I want it now.
This picture of The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner blesses me. Mary, a teenager, gets the shock of her life. Rather than have a greeting card wedding followed by, at an appropriate time, a Pinterest worthy baby shower and a birthing scene filled with the help of close women relatives, Mary's life has been turned upside down. Mary questions, yet she still decides: "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said" (Luke 1:38).
Mary has expectant hope. The words "expectant" and "hope" are a lovely combination of words. To be expectant is to feel that something is about to happen, and to hope is to want something to happen. The definitions of both words involve "to happen." It, whatever "it" is, has not happened yet. It is in the future. Mary's expectant hope comes from knowing the Lord. This is a young woman who has spent time contemplating God's goodness. With the angel, she simply states: "I am the Lord's servant," but, later, with her cousin Elizabeth she will let her excitement flow in praise of what God is doing and going to do.
Daily life is rarely greeting card worthy, yet it is in the daily life that I get to know the goodness of my Savior and I am prepared to have expectant hope for what lies ahead.
Christmas cards tend to be scenes of perfection: perfect balance, composition, color, emotion (happy, joyful, peaceful or all three). To be sure, I wouldn't be excited to put a card up on my fireplace mantle that shows Joseph and Mary scroungy: shabby, dirty, sweaty, and unkempt from traveling to Bethlehem. Let's add in the way most of us women look after we have given birth. Like everyone else, I want beauty. I want wholeness, happiness, joy, peace, and I want it now.
This picture of The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner blesses me. Mary, a teenager, gets the shock of her life. Rather than have a greeting card wedding followed by, at an appropriate time, a Pinterest worthy baby shower and a birthing scene filled with the help of close women relatives, Mary's life has been turned upside down. Mary questions, yet she still decides: "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said" (Luke 1:38).
Mary has expectant hope. The words "expectant" and "hope" are a lovely combination of words. To be expectant is to feel that something is about to happen, and to hope is to want something to happen. The definitions of both words involve "to happen." It, whatever "it" is, has not happened yet. It is in the future. Mary's expectant hope comes from knowing the Lord. This is a young woman who has spent time contemplating God's goodness. With the angel, she simply states: "I am the Lord's servant," but, later, with her cousin Elizabeth she will let her excitement flow in praise of what God is doing and going to do.
Daily life is rarely greeting card worthy, yet it is in the daily life that I get to know the goodness of my Savior and I am prepared to have expectant hope for what lies ahead.
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