Do You Know?

Mary did you know that your baby boy would someday walk on water?

Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?

It’s a popular Christmas song with great questions. What did Mary know? A young girl pregnant and unmarried in a time when pregnant and unmarried could be a death sentence. A young woman who had been visited by an angel to tell her “Do not be afraid”.

Mary knew the ancient scriptures. She knew the words of Isaiah that proclaimed the goodness of God. The words that remind us that God looks with favor on the lowliness of his servant. That his mercies are for those who fear him but brings down the powerful from their thrones and God promises to love God’s people forever.

Mary may not have known the specifics of how God was going to do this through the child that she carried in her womb, but she did know that God is good and desires good for all of God’s creation. Mary’s journey was not going to be an easy one. She would have to face the man to whom she was engaged, give birth in a foreign city, flee for her family’s life to Egypt where they would live as refugees until they dared to return to Galilee. She would watch her son be wrongfully convicted and executed by authorities after being accused and sentenced by her own people.

It is unlikely that Mary knew all of this. It is likely that her life played out as ours do, with moments of joy and times of pain. She may have held tight to the conviction that God looked with favor on her while still being uncertain from one day to the next how that favor would play out. All the time remembering the angel who told her “Do not be afraid”.

We don’t know the particulars of our life, how it will play out, or where we will end up. There will be times of pain, and times of joy, times of certainty, and times of unknowing. We can only live it knowing what Mary knew: that God intends good for us. We can remember the words of the angel, the same words repeated hundreds of times in scripture: Do not be afraid.