And so our journey continues... Mary stayed at her cousin Elizabeth's house for 3 months. For the ladies, that's one trimester in pregnancy. I'm sure that she learned an awful lot in her time there that helped her when her time came to deliver Jesus. I was thinking about this last night...during Mary's stay there, she probably thought that she's be at home giving birth to Baby Jesus. But we know that didn't happen.
So Mary returned to her home very different than we she left. If she wasn't before, she was "great with child" now. If she hadn't before, she had felt the Christ child move in her womb. She had come to know him in only the way a mother can carrying her child. She journeyed back to her village and there was Joseph and the family waiting. Joseph had a decision to make. Mary was expecting and it wasn't his child. We know that at some point Joseph was visited by an angel in his sleep. He was told that this child was of God and that he needed to take Mary as his wife, and help her raise this child as his own. He was told that this child would be great and would save His people. And Joseph, being a great man, took this heavenly message as truth. He went ahead and took Mary as his wife. But the story gets more interesting still Then came the degree from Caesar that every man was to be counted in the city of his ancestor's birth. Oh, and pay taxes too. Now Joseph told Mary and her family that he couldn't stay in Nazareth to be counted and pay his tax. His people were from a little town called Bethlehem. He'd have to make the journey, and Mary would have to go with him. She and the baby she carried inside were Joseph's family now.
IMAGINE this....being "great with child" and your husband (who you really don't know yet) walks in and tells you that you've got to climb on the back of boney donkey and ride over 100 miles to a city where you don't know anyone. You're not traveling on a paved road, or in a comfortable SUV with passenger side temperature control. You won't be sleeping in the Holiday Inn Express each night when you need to stop for sleep. And very pregnant women have to go to the bathroom a lot! This was not going to be an easy journey for anyone, let alone a 9 month pregnant young woman. Mary was riding on an old, stubborn donkey. She was going to have to cross over hills, river beds and rocky terrains. I IMAGINE that everyone on the road to Bethlehem wasn't kind and considerate. And she had no idea when this very important baby she was carrying would make His grand entrance into this world. You know, Mary didn't have all the pieces to this God-designed plan. We get to read about the whole story in the Bible. But she just had to trust that her new husband would take care of her along the way, and that the God she said "yes" to when she was chosen to bear his Son, had all of these very important details worked out for her. Surely, He was in control of this part of the journey, even if it made no sense to her or her family. So, she packed what little things the donkey could carry, some food, and climbed up on the boney back of that donkey to travel to the little Town of Bethlehem. What trust! What surrender to a plan that was bigger than her ideas of how this baby would be born. IMAGINE trusting like that....
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