This Christmas I am thinking of Mary. Over the centuries Mary has gotten a bad deal. The Catholics make her almost divine; they even pray to her. We Protestants go the other way: we keep her out of prime time. She's rarely held up as a role model like other women in the Bible: Ruth, Esther, even Dorcas.
Churches have Dorcas Funds to help those in need. But I’ve never heard of a church with a Mary Fund.
But Mary had a Fund. She had treasures in her heart. We all know the story. Shepherds came to worship the baby Jesus – and Luke says Mary "treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." Later on, they lose the boy Jesus for three days only to find him in the Temple. Imagine the panic: You’ve lost your kid, not for three hours, but for three days! What was Mary’s response? She treasured all these things in her heart.
But you say: she was Jesus’ mother! Of course she treasured things about her boy!
But this is what’s so remarkable. She was the mother of God; you’d think heaven would keep her in the loop about things:
“Okay these are the wise men … this is a planned visit … we’ve got sharpshooters on the roof … don’t worry …” etc.
You’d expect her to be treated like royalty. Think of Queen Elizabeth, mother of Prince Charles. No mean life here. No stables for her. What? Lose her son in a crowd? No!; secret service would be all over the place.
But not Mary the mother of God. One visit as a young girl by the angel Gabriel, and that’s it. No more heavenly visits. No more inside scoop. She’s left to her own natural wits to raise this child. She’s not given a palace to live in; not even the Davenport Hotel. She gets a stable. She loses her son and has to go find him. She goes to a wedding and frets about wine. She sees her son die on the cross, and gets handed off to John to be cared for. That’s it.
Brothers and sisters: if this for the mother of God, how about for us? Better than Mary, we have the New Testament to guide us. Better than Mary, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. We have it much better than the mother of God.
And yet do we treasure up in our hearts the circumstances of our lives?
Perhaps because of our comfort we take everything for granted. We forget that we are the continuing story of the advent of Jesus Christ into the world. Luke, who wrote the report about Mary, also wrote in Acts that he was recording what Jesus began to do in the world.
We continue to be part of that story.
We often pray to know the will of God. Jesus IS the will of God. But how his life unfolds in us is often unclear to us. We are not given a preview. We are simply brought into the circumstances of our lives with Jesus in our midst, in our hearts, in the Word. And far from taking our circumstances for granted -- or even griping about them -- we need to do some treasuring up.
What should we treasure? Not the circumstances themselves. But we treasure the mystery of Jesus Christ in our circumstances. Because he is in the midst, there is something about these circumstances I am going through that is right at the heart of God’s counsel for Christ in me the hope of glory.
In this sense they are holy; in this sense I need to give my best, my all, with humility and worship, and free from complaint.
Treasure up … this word in the Greek means to preserve, to keep from perishing, to protect from being lost. It means to value. This Christmas, thank God for the circumstances of your lives, because Jesus is in the midst.
And that is something worth treasuring up for.
Logos2Go
Luke 2.19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
Luke 2.51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.
Acts 1.1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach...
This Christmas, treasure up
de Tocqueville on Christianity and Islam
The Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville traveled in this country in the early nineteenth century. I came across this observation he made in 1835, and I think it makes for good discussion in light of current events (I break up his paragraph for easier reading):
"It has been shown that, at times of general cultivation and equality, the human mind does not consent to adopt dogmatical opinions without reluctance, and feels their necessity acutely in spiritual matters only.
This proves, in the first place, that at such times religions ought, more cautiously than at any other, to confine themselves within their own precincts; for in seeking to extend their power beyond religious matters, they incur a risk of not being believed at all. The circle within which they seek to bound the human intellect ought therefore to be carefully traced, and beyond its verge the mind should be left in entire freedom to its own guidance.
Mohammed professed to derive from Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other -- beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods ..."
Hmmm.
Logos2Go
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve, B&R Samizdat Express, 504
This is what it's all about ...
"What is Life?"
"What is Love?"
Big questions like these take up a lot of time without producing answers. Or they occupy huge tomes nobody reads. Some people, having talked long enough about them, might even earn tenure at an institute of higher learning. But the questions only get bigger.
At the Mission, I've been getting to know a man named Art; and Art tends to ask the big questions. Like last night over dinner ...:
... the dining room was overflowing with people and noise, the aroma of dependency freely mixing with the warmth of caring. In addition to the guys staying at the Mission, many had come in from the dreary cold. They were served hamburger patties smothered with chili, with curly fries and salad on the side.
As usual, it was a miracle: hundreds of servings ... with leftovers.
And Art blurts out:
What's any of this about anyway... ?
Art is a deep thinker in faded blue jeans; I'd even say he's tortured by his thoughts. That's why I find him a kindred spirit.
But I'm chomping down on my hamburger and mildly irritated at having to do philosophy at the same time.
"Pass the salt and pepper."
Yea but what's any of this about anyway ... I mean look at us ... nobody's interested in anything but eating and the basics ...
It was one of those moments when the jigsaw puzzle of thoughts aligned with insight from above; so I blurted out, probably helping myself more than helping him:
This is what it's all about: you are here; I am here; we are eating this meal together; this moment ... together ... here ... and we are thankful. All of this, NOW, is by God's grace. This is what it's all about, and we must capture the moment ...
Logos2Go
John 6.29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”