The Heart of Mary
Looking carefully into the heart of Mary, the mother of Jesus, can teach us so much about dealing with what God has said to us even when we do not understand it. She obviously knew the words from heaven’s messenger and believed them. Gabriel said, “You will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus” (Luke 1:31). She knew the words were true, she understood them to the best of her knowledge. These very words were in her unwritten “Bible”—the same words in our written Scriptures. How did she respond? “How can this be, since I do not know a man?”
Isn’t that what happens to us as we hear the messages from heaven when we read the Scripture? We know what is said, but we try to figure out what they mean and how they apply to our lives. Unbelievers may deny what is said and ignore God’s words. We are not like them. We know they are true but immediately seek to find the meaning of the words.
There was so much that was happening in Mary’s life. Did she fully understand the words of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist? Was it possible that she might have known what the scribes knew about the city where Jesus was born? Is it possible she made that eighty-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem having insight about how God was working in her life to fulfil His will? We do not know. We read the words and we know “the rest of the story.” She heard the words of God, but there was no way she could understand them as fully as we do.
After the shepherds left her with the Child wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in that manger, the Bible says, “But Mary kept all these things…in her heart” (Luke 2:19). They had told her what they had seen in the field and heard the words from heaven that the child wrapped in swaddling clothes was the Messiah (Luke 2:11). There had to be so many unanswered questions, but she kept every word she had heard in her heart.
The text says even more. “But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” One Greek scholar says this about the word “pondered.” “Placing together for comparison. Mary would go over each detail in the words of Gabriel and of the shepherds and compared the saying with the facts so far developed and brood over it all with a mother’s high hopes and joys.”
So, as you read the Bible and find difficult verses, do not ever forget them. Keep the words in your heart and ponder over them. Sometimes it may take a long time to sort things out, but never set them aside. Keep them, ponder over them and as you hunger and thirst you will be filled (Matt. 5:6).