Mary, What A Mom

Max Lucado has twenty-five questions that he wants to ask Mary the mother of Jesus, here are a few of my favourites.

What was it like watching him pray?

When he saw a rainbow did he ever mention a flood?

Did you ever feel awkward teaching him how he created the world?

When he saw a lamb being led to the slaughter did he act differently?

Did you ever try to count the stars with him . . . and succeed?

Did he ever come home with a black eye?

Did he have any friends by the name of Judas?

Did the thought ever occur to you that the God to whom you were praying was asleep under your own roof

Did you ever accidentally call him father?

What did he and his cousin John talk about as kids?

Did you ever think, That’s God eating my soup?

I wonder if we will ever really understand? I mean we see Jesus in one of two ways, he’s either a baby in a manger or a grown up. But what happened in between. His childhood consist of one statement made in the book of Luke 2:40 There the child grew up healthy and strong. He was filled with wisdom beyond his years, and God placed his special favor upon him. And one story about Jesus getting left behind at the temple during a visit to Jerusalem when he was twelve. But what about the rest of his child hood? What happened between the manger and the cross?

Sometimes as Evangelicals I think we relegate Mary to some obscure corner and never talk about her We have seen how the Catholic Church has virtually deityized Mary and so in an effort to not appear pro-Catholic we do what is normally done with other pregnant teenagers like her, we prefer that she not come to church. The only time we mention Mary is at Christmas and the rest of the time, you’d think that Jesus was raised as an orphan. but Jesus wasn’t raised an orphan, it was Mary who changed God’s diapers and it was Mary who wiped God’s nose and it was Mary who held God when He was crying. Kind of a scary thought isn’t it?

When we think of the one man who had the greatest impact on the human race, you ever wonder who had an impact Him? Who helped mould and shape the character of Christ? Who helped make Jesus of Nazareth everything that Jesus of Nazareth was? Who influenced the way he talked, the way he walked, the way he looked at life?

“Well” you say “He was the son of God” That’s true but let me tell you a little story. I’m the son of Burton Guptill, but for the first ten years of my life my dad was in the Canadian Armed forces and spent a lot of time playing soldier in the woods of Camp Gagetown New Brunswick or overseas in places like Cyprus and Germany. For the next eight years that I spent at home, Dad was the captain of a Salvage tug and was gone as much as he was home. And so while I am the son of Burton Guptill I was raised for the most part by Elizabeth Guptill. Therefore, the major influence in my life was not Captain B.R. Guptill although it has been said that I’m becoming more like him each year that I live and I haven’t figured out if that is a compliment or a complaint? The major influence on the life of Rev. Denn Guptill was Elizabeth Guptill.

In much, the same way God was an absentee father and delegated the raising of his son to a very young Galilean lady by the name of Mary. Yes, Jesus was the son of God and he was the man who came to take away our sin but before that, he was a teenager and before that, he was a child and before that, he was a baby. Moreover, we need to ask “who held him to her breast?” and “Who cuddled Him” and “Who rocked him, told him bedtime stories and sang him lullabies?” Who stayed up all night with him when he was sick?” “And who wiped away the tear and bandaged his knee where he fell and scraped it”

God may have been His father but Mary was his mother, and she was the one who raised Christ to be the man that he became. But what made Mary special? So special in fact that God was willing to entrust her with his one and only son. Ask yourself this question: What type of person would you want to raise your kids? I probably wouldn’t want me raising mine, I’d want somebody that was a really good parent.