When You Get to Have Tea with Mary

It’s morning. All is calm. All it not yet bright which I love. The only thing adding light to this moment is my bedside lamp which feels a like a comforting mama, tucking me in, fussing over me a little to make sure I'm taken care of in this moment.

The New Year dawned and I didn’t have a book. My Advent book was put away, back on our downstairs bookshelf until November 30, 2018 when I will try to remember where I put it, and when I finally do, I will reverently pull it off it’s shelf to read another 25 days of sacred thoughts like they are brand new.

So what do I read in these holy moments?

I opened up my Bible to the Gospel of Luke and started to read. My head is spinning with thoughts of Mary.

I've been trying to picture her reaction to the glorious presence of Gabriel in what I imagine was her slightly shabby hometown of Nazareth. Quite the contrast don't you think? Can you imagine what a shock to her teenage eyes that glorious heavenly being must have been?  Yet she saw,  she listened and only asked one pretty basic question (How can this be since I’m a virgin?).

Mary bowed her head, her will, and told Gabriel she would be the Lord’s servant.

In a word, she believed.

Not quite the response Zechariah had to Gabriel's announcement of John earlier in the chapter but then Zechariah was older and perhaps a bit more jaded. Age tends to do that don't you agree?

As Jesus grew Mary watched him.

The Bible tells us a few times that she pondered these things in her heart. Did she understand the cross? Gabriel told her her baby would be a King in the line of David so did she understand that her baby’s hands and feet would be nailed to a cross?

And in the stable, as the labor pains began to get stronger and stronger did she have thoughts about why this was happening in a barn? Did she look around and think to herself, “Umm, aren’t I giving birth to a king? Shouldn’t it be different than this?" Did she just breath deep and start repeating, “I am the Lord’s servant" over and over again?

I wish I knew. I wish she had a book. She could tell her story, give us all the details, go on tour, sell out huge venues and get promoted by all the right churches.

Wait. I’m getting carried away. That wasn't her style was it?

I do wish I could sit down with her over a cup of tea at my dinner table. I want to hear her shape words about belief, trust, and abandonment. What does it look like? How does it feel? Tell me Mary.

I'd want her to reassure me that even though life doesn't look like what I think it should, or even what I think I've been promised, that I just need to hold tight, keep believing, and give myself over to her baby boy.

She'd tell me that he is such a very good boy and that I have nothing to worry about. He's totally and completely got me.

Can you imagine hearing those words from the mouth of Mary?

Mary who was visited by a glorious angel and then became pregnant without a man.

Mary who was told she was highly favored and yet give birth in a barn.

Mary who was told her son would be called the Son of the Most High and that he would reign over Jacob's descendants forever.

Mary who watched her son die on a cross and heard him cry out to John to make sure she was taken care of.

Mary, who may or may not have been at the empty tomb and may or may not have seen Jesus in his resurrected bodily form before he went up to heaven. I can't keep all the Mary's in the Gospel accounts straight and from the research I did, I'm not sure anyone else can either.

Mary who's belief feels so strong and pure that it seems to scream at me from the words Luke uses in his Gospel. Words I want to dive down into so I can be thoroughly drenched clear through into my being so I might look and feel and be different.

Oh how I want to know so much more.

But I guess that's it isn't it?

Perhaps like Mary, I simply need to believe.