What Was Mary Thinking?
It can happen in a moment. A vision can come that will completely change your life! Before the vision, your future was in one direction. After the vision, it was in another.
Typically, our first thoughts about sudden visions are more magical than biblical. A wand-waving angel with stardust sprinkled from above, though charming, comes from Disney, not deity. God’s visions are different.
Loose thinking supposes a vision is like winning the lottery, full of prizes that bless instead of surprises that challenge. The fact is, hosting a biblical vision is difficult.
In the beginning, it may sound good, as I’m sure it did for Mary.
To be told that you will be the mother of a perfect child tempts a measure of pride. Think of it: No child will be smarter than your child, no child will be better behaved, no child will have a more pleasing personality. What an opportunity!
To be told also that your child is the one history has been waiting for, the one the prophets predicted, the one who will save his people further tempts more pride.
All the other children will have a future much less significant than what Mary’s child will have.
Mary, mother of the Son of God!
Then again, there is something in human nature that triggers envy, jealousy, a critical spirit, doubt, and even the desire for a downfall. Not all the people around Mary would be her friends.
It must have been an awesome challenge for a young teenage girl to tell the man she was going to marry that she was already pregnant—by God! But this is exactly what Mary had to do.
Knowing human nature, the resulting scorn that came her way, and didn’t soon depart, had to be upsetting. Tongues would wag. Fingers would point. Women folk would huddle. Whispers would be heard.
Yet Mary settled into her honored role with grace. How did she do it?
The Bible tells us how. Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:19).
All what things? What the angel Gabriel told her, what the shepherds told her, what Simeon told her, what Anna, the prophetess, told her, what Elizabeth told her.
When the challenges to these revelations compounded to the level of catastrophe, Mary held on to these words—and they held on to her!
Even at the outset when the angel Gabriel encountered Mary, she immediately saw the challenge of what he was offering, and was reluctant to accept it.
However, God made sure that Mary wouldn’t be blind-sided about what her future would include. There would be much more suffering than she first suspected. Simeon spoke of a sword that would pierce her soul (Luke 2:35).
And it did, more than once.
For example, there was a time in Mary’s life when doubt about the sanity of her son was gaining momentum. In the twelfth chapter of Matthew, we see Mary coming with her other sons to bring Jesus home, out of an apparent concern for his mental well-being.
What a tormenting thought: a crazy Christ! An odd God! A dippy, daffy deliverer! What had gone wrong with him?
This proved to be an even more difficult day for Mary; because, in response to her arrival, Jesus stepped out of the house to ask, “Who is my mother…?” It seemed as if she was being dishonored, dismissed! That, or he was even more crazy than she had feared.
Plaguing Mary also were reports of Jesus having said, “Think not that I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword.”
Oh, dear! But didn’t Zacharias speak of guiding men’s feet to the way of peace? And didn’t the angels herald the peace he would bring? Peace was at the heart of his mission!
It seemed that these announced “glad tidings” were unraveling!
For Mary, sad and mad were doing their best to replace glad. And who knows what Mary was thinking that day when Jesus was crucified like a common criminal on the town’s garbage heap! The mission ended that day! Or so it seemed.
In shock, she wondered, could this really be happening?
Reality confirmed it was happening when Jesus spoke to Mary from the cross.
That’s real, hearing the voice of her son speaking directly to her.
But what he said only added another problem!
Exercising his right as the oldest son, Jesus removed Mary from the care of her next oldest son, James. He did it just when she needed James and the rest of the family the most!
Yet Jesus gave his mother to this young man John. Why? Because he was a believer and James wasn’t. James didn’t even show up that day.
Can you imagine all the emotional upheaval in the family that triggered? Her son gets crucified, and now she is separated from the rest of her family?
The scandal! The added suffering! Oh, this was real, alright.
Then Jesus dies!
Then his lifeless body is removed from the cross!
Then they bury him!
Mary’s vision was under the most vicious attack! Hell had just emptied its arsenal to stop Jesus and to stomp out the faith anyone ever had in him, including Mary’s faith.
It was in such moments that Mary repeated those words from God that caused her to accept this life-changing role in the first place.
Remember, we don’t want to forfeit in the dark the vision that came to us in the light. Therefore, Mary put into practice a strategy that would vitalize the vision whenever its veracity seemed doubtful.
The Greek word for “ponder” means to confer, to make connections. She did this because those words provided a stabilizing reassurance.
We must do as Mary did: repeatedly think, and ponder, and meditate the words of God—and certainly not the words of the devil!
Providing encouragement for this directive, G.D. Watson wrote:
It is eternally impossible for God to utter one word that is not loaded with divinity; and on the other hand, it is impossible for the devil to utter one word which does not, in some way, contain a lie.1
The lie deceives in order to destroy. But the truth, remembered with reinforcing faith, sets us free from giving in and giving up.
Mary remained a rock-solid, truth reliant mother! And that rewarded her with the most astounding results! Let’s count them.
First, seeing her son, resurrected from the dead! What mother had ever seen that before?
Can you imagine the thrill of that moment, and the abiding, residing gratitude Mary felt afterwards?
He wasn’t gone! He’s back!
Second, Mary must have seen the conversion of her son James who had not been a believer during Jesus’ ministry. Yet this son became the titular head of the Jerusalem church, not because his of flesh and blood kinship with Jesus but because of his greater devotion and maturity.
James the Just, they called him. No zig zags in his life now! His righteous life spoke of his radical conversion.
“Old camel knees” they also called him, because of his long hours of deep prayer to his brother, and now his Lord! His knees developed callouses as James rocked back and forth in intense intercession. Few there are who commit to prayer like that. Mary saw this happen to James, now revered in the Jerusalem church.
And just how did the skeptic become so spiritual? The Bible tells us that after his resurrection, Jesus met with James.
Oh, my! The proof couldn’t have been plainer! It was irrefragable! That brother he had long doubted was indeed the Messiah!
Third, Mary was there in the Upper Room when the Holy Spirit filled everyone there.
Glory! She had never felt the presence of God so intensely before! Not even when she stood before the highest of the angels!
This experienced overwhelmed her, fulfilled her, totally transformed her!
Fourth, Mary saw her son ascend into the sky when he returned to Heaven.
She looked. She loved! What a Son rise!
He arose first from the grave, and now from the earth! His rising, not one of escape but of triumph!
Fifth, there is some evidence that Mary and John were later members of the largest church in the New Testament, the megachurch at Ephesus.
What began as a small seed inside her was well on its way to becoming a world-wide harvest. Mary was there week after week as thousands came to worship her son!
She saw, with awe, the amazing results! What she had kept saying to herself during those exceedingly difficult days had become even more true than what she had imagined!
Yes, ask Mary. There were many times when it seemed like it wouldn’t happen.
Have you known days like that?
Are you in such a time right now?
Are you doing what Mary did?
Are you holding onto truth so it can hold onto you?
Notes:
1. G.D. Watson, Soul Food, (Hampton, TN., Harvey Christian Publishers, 2000), p.11.
