Faith and Promise: Hidden in Your Heart

Six years have past since the events that fulfilled Old Testament prophecies occurred. Yet, the people of those events have lived on their lives. One such person is Mary, mother of Jesus, wife to Joseph who continued her early years as a mother engaged fully in the ways of most women of her time. Still, that which she has treasured in memory is unlike the common thought. What would the quiet conversations of a young Mary sound like a few years after her immaculate conception and event filled pregnancy and birthing story? Maybe this one would start in front of a washing basin... where Mary appearing the very busy, young mother of nineteen years who has fallen asleep doing chores. She suddenly awakens, thinking someone has called her name. Then she crinkles her nose at the realization that she has dozed off while cleaning some clothes...

“Oh dear…”

She wipes her brow and continues scrubbing the materials.

“Do not fall asleep again.”

Still working, she calls out to the voice that called her name.

“Is that you Joseph? Joseph...? Yeshua?”

No response…

“Well I’m sure they will be back soon. Yeshua, Yosef and Ya’aqov could not wait for their father to take them to synagogue today. The new rabbi is such a good storyteller they say. Ha, no wonder the boys come back wanting to play at David and Goliath and throw stones at each other.”

She shakes her head, but smiles. Mary pulls out the swaddling cloth from the basin and squeezes the access water. She holds it out and smiles in memory.

“Such a good blanket for my boys… the merchant in Egypt drove a hard bargain for it, but I knew Egyptian linen would last many children… and now it is ready for our fourth… Four children. How Adonai has been good to me… I am blessed…”

Mary closes her eyes and lets out a heavy, tired sigh.

“I need to say that more often… remember all that the Lord has done for me… protecting Joseph, Yeshua and I as we fled through the desert in the middle of the night to Egypt from Bethlehem… from Herod’s decreed to slaughter the babies… the children of my friends. Oh their cries still ring in my ears.”

Mary grimaces in remembrance. Mary’s hands squeeze tighter around the material, water drips out into the bowl as she closes her eyes and remembers that night.

“Berakah… the Lord has blessed me… I murmured the word as a man hurled a stone at my head as I walked outside my parent’s house in Nazareth, a pregnant girl with no husband. I am blessed… I thought to myself as we dwelt in the foreign land of Egypt full of foreign Egyptian gods. Uprooted, outcasts, living off the gold from foreign kings. I am blessed… even though we have been under the oppression of the Romans here. But, I am blessed.”

Mary looks off into the distance.

“And my soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he took a one look at me, a nameless girl in a small village and look what happened – I cannot begin to express my joy. My mind bursts at the thought of the God of all heaven presenting me with the ability to bare His beloved into humanity and raise him…”

The reality of her son’s purpose on earth pieces her heart and she closes her eyes tight, trying to shut out the thought.

“But, a sword will piece your own soul did not the prophet in Jerusalem say… for it has been and it will be exactly what He promised, beginning with Abraham and right up to now.”

She shakes her head in a deep, unrealized sorrow.

“How it was intended. I knew in my heart, my spirit leaped with the words of the angel. I could not say no. I could not back down from this message, this calling. To bare witness to Adonai’s glory here on earth. This glory… I saw it in Yeshua’s eyes when he laughed for the first time. Love. Hope. The things that do not remove themselves, but birth from a beautiful surrender. Saying “let it be so as you have said”. Allowing the heartbreak, hardship, and fear to pass through me as I stared wide-eyed and in awe at the angel before me, telling me I would conceive a promise… the promise… I could have screamed and ran away… but, the love I felt truly is the same love I see in the eyes of my son when he sits next to his father and learns way of wood or when he plays warrior with his brothers. Or when he smells the challah bread baking for Shabbat. Yes, it would have been too easy to say no, to cry and run away. I know this now… and I will learn to know it at a greater level as the words of the prophets unfold. The people do not know what my heart knows, they do not understand all that I have kept secret in my heart… but, one day they will… one day, they will see why my whole being said ‘yes’ to the angel that day… one day.”

Mary stands to her feet and takes the cloudy basin of water to the window. She carefully dumps it over the side and places it back on the ground. As she stands, the sound of little feet and laughter enters the house.

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I will be honest, I struggled to write about Mary... so much has been written about her or perceived or worshipped about her. But, when I waded through the historical documents and Biblical texts regarding the chosen one, I kept recalling my own mother and her dedication to her children. Again, like most Biblical characters (which are just treated as characters and not living, breathing, decision-making people), we don't go past the text in which they are mentioned. Yet, the realities that would surround Mary after she and Joseph returned to Nazareth with Jesus are just that - realities; a mother who would wash her children's clothes and work sunrise to sunset to make her home a functional one. This perspective gave the words "and Mary treasured these things in her heart" much more meaning. A busy mother who's culture condemned her first pregnancy as sin and who experienced extraordinary situations could privately unfold and actively remind herself why she and Joseph would find themselves in the situations they did. These 'treasured things' I believe gave Mary hope and peace - that no matter what the future held for her and her son, she would always have the promises hidden in her heart.