Who's Mom?

But Mary kept all these things, and pondered in her heart.

THIS is the verse of the account Luke gives of the birth of Jesus and the appearance of the shepherds and the angels (aka the Nativity) that prompted me to write this devotional, more than any other! Verse nineteen of the second chapter of Luke brings us back to the protagonist being Mary who gave birth to Jesus in the stable in Bethlehem. The focus is off the shepherds, off the angels, off Joseph, even off Jesus -- who like the groom at most Western weddings has only the obligation to show up! But Mary. She was the one told she would give birth to the Son of God (in the first chapter of Luke, but we will need another study for that), she was the one who carried the baby for nine months, and NOW she is the one who gets to be ... Mom.

YES, just because Mary is the mother of the Savior, which is Christ the Lord, she is not perfect. And over the next, eh, thirty years after having at least five more children (again, see Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3) she has realized just how imperfect she as a mother, as a wife, and a person, is. But it is a safe bet that none of them had their births announced by angels to shepherds in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night! None of them had wise men come from the east and present them gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh -- and THAT story is in the second chapter of Matthew, which often gets tied in to most Nativity scenes you see. It makes for a great scene, but the wise men (does not say Magi, does not say kings) were not there when Jesus was born in Beth-lehem; they came to the family house in Beth-lehem when Jesus was likely close to two years old.

What happened that night in the Beth-lehem stable when the shepherds came to pay their respects, and what the shepherds said about how they found out about Jesus and Who He Is ... THAT is what stayed with Mary. "But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." (I expect Joseph did too, but there is just a special bond between mother and child.) She knew the Hebrew prophecies but I do not expect she knew entirely her part in them. Neither do we twenty centuries later, as we live in the world so influenced by the faith ignited by the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Savior, which is Christ the Lord. At that time after the shepherds had visited and shared their story, Mary knew at the time ... she just had to be MOM.