“But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” - Luke 2:19 Only one day old, the baby lies sleeping, oblivious to the commotion that’s been going on around him.
Angels, shepherds and wise men have glorified his birth. There are a lot of visitors gathering in the lowly barn where Jesus was born.
I wonder who offered the visitors the traditional acts of hospitality necessitated by Jewish custom. I hope it wasn’t Mary. She’d just given birth without the accouterments of a modern hospital setting. I’m thinking she was very tired while she was doing her pondering.
It’s the day after Christmas. The season of Advent is a hectic time for most of us - particularly for women.
My husband has helped by stuffing Christmas cards, but most of the preparations have been done by me: most of the shopping for presents, most of the cleaning and cooking, most of the decorating of the home, most of the choosing/ designing/preparing of Christmas cards, most of the calendar coordination.
In some homes it may be the other way around, but I suspect that in a vast majority of homes the moms of the family wanted to sleep in this morning - thankful that Christmas is over.
That’s sad. In all of the preparing for the season, it’s tough to celebrate the real meaning behind it: that God loved us so much that He broke into this world as one of us.
We intend to celebrate God’s love through all the decorating and gifting and visiting, but too often we end up turning God’s love into a ritual of superficial activities.
So now Christmas is over … or is it? Hopefully, the hectic preparations are behind us. All the moms,and dads, can put down the “to do” lists and now eat leftovers.
If we can just relax a few minutes, and, like Mary, ponder the wonders of the season, then Christmas is really only beginning. In this in between time - between the hectic preparations and the time when we’ll pull out the boxes and begin to put everything away - we can sit down and ponder the joy of Christ’s presence among us.
Our lives have been hectic this year. The economy has been its worst since the Great Depression. Too many are struggling to keep above water. Friends have lost a child, a spouse, a parent, hope. It’s been a tough year for many.
But here, this day after Christmas, there is one Word that is truer than financial problems, physical or mental health issues or even death.
God has given us hope: hope that the trivial busyness of this world really is only superficial when compared with the deep abiding love of our God; hope that our love for one another makes a difference not only to that person, but to God and to the world; hope that there is the possibility of peace within our hearts and on this earth.
Out of the craziness of this season, perhaps the day after Christmas is the best day of all. Christ is here! Our hope has come! Rest awhile, and ponder the words before life gets busy again.
THE REV. LESLIE BELDEN IS A MINISTER OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (U.S.A.).
Religion, Pages 11 on 12/26/2009