Devotions Archive Archive: 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 Search Archive Print This Article Reception Tuesday, December 21, 2010 Luke 1:42-43 Elizabeth said to Mary, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" Mary and Elizabeth - mothers together kneel and rock, back and forth, soothing the children within their wombs. They sing mother songs and laugh mother laughs. They are blessed and full of joy. Their children are anointed by God even before they are born. The mothers will kneel and rock back and forth again when their children are born, easing them from their wombs into the oxygen of the world. Loud cries in pain, and then, suddenly, in gladness. Once more for Mary, at least, another time she will rock, broken and bowed before the cross, watching her beloved son die before she does, put to death without grace or fairness. Her moaning, keening cries of grief might remind her of the moments before he was born, when Joseph held her in the Bethlehem stable. God wept and thrashed his own grief upon the day of Jesus' death. Lightning crashed around the cross. Thunderclaps broke the silence. The earth shook and the Hebrew temple curtain ripped away, holy of holies exposed and available to all. Mary mirrored the feelings of God then. And so she does now, because God is assuredly happy and full of joy in this at-last-coming-down to his children once and for all. Since Adam hid, he has been unable to walk in his garden with them. Not until now. Your plan, the design of your heart, stands forever, Lord. Let my soul wait for you, for your help and your shield. "; Add      Edit    Delete