Mary

Thinking this morning about Mary, Jesus’ mother. I’ve been trying to decide whether it would have been really easy for Mary to believe in Jesus or really hard.

At first I thought it might be easy. Every mother believes in her child; we can’t help it. Even mothers with rotten kids think they’re angels. Surely Jesus was an exceptional kid. Why not have faith in him? It seems like a mother’s default reaction.

Plus, there’s the whole angel appearance thing. A “magical” person told her to believe in Jesus’ unique origin. Unlikely that she forgot that.

But then I started thinking of the reasons faith would be hard. As Jesus’ mother, Mary would have seen things other people hadn’t—stuff like dirty diapers and ear aches. She would have comforted Jesus when he fell down or when other kids mistreated him. She, more intimately than anyone else, saw Jesus’ humanity. She knew he was a man, 100 percent a man. And so, to call on her to believe in his divinity, that seems like a tall order.

I thought, too, about my kids. Certainly, I’d have faith in London if she told me she wanted to be an astronaut; I’d be her biggest supporter. But what if she told me she was God in the flesh? It’s natural to support your kid, but there are limits…

Anyway, I’m glad Mary chose to believe. I wonder sometimes what it was that finally pushed her over the edge. I think maybe it was the resurrection. Imagine the joy of a mother whose son comes back to life—you’ve got to know that changed everything.

Maybe though, she believed all along. Maybe she knew every time she wiped his nose or wiped a tear from his eye that she was serving her Creator.