How could anyone believe? How could anyone understand? It was hard enough for us, who were there. Words are so small. How can I explain to anyone that God came to us - to me - in a way that not even Moses knew? Moses had to turn his head aside when God went by, so as not to be blinded. And yet - you remember, John - he was here with us. And, even before then, before you knew him, with me. IN me. Who can understand? Who is going to believe? How can I speak of what happened to me when the angel came, and when life began?
All of us talked about the Messiah coming. We used to talk together, my friends and I... what would it be like if it were to be our son who would grow up to be the Redeemer of Israel? And we pictured basking in the limelight as the mother of a king, being honored and listened to, and not ever being afraid of the Romans any more. Who ever thought it would be like this?
There's such a wide gap between the baby I held in my arms and the grown man who went willingly to his death. Yet they were both my son - and not my son. He was God's from the beginning. He was God from the beginning. And yet I held him in my arms and sang lullabies and nursed him and believed - foolishly - that he would be my son forever. I still don't understand it. I'll never understand it. How God could come to me, and grow in me, and let me hold him... Why me? I was just an ordinary girl. There were a dozen like me. I wasn't especially good, or especially pretty; my family weren't wealthy or well-known. But the angel came and my world changed. The whole world changed, of course, but I didn't know it. My world was all I could see.
Elizabeth helped, of course, and after the angel apeared to him Joseph was a rock. That's probably why God chose me, you know, because he knew what a good man my Joseph was, that he'd take care of me and shield me from all the gossip and backbiting. You know, sometimes I got pretty down. I wasn't sick, much, but I was tired a lot and lonely, too, because people didn't understand. We couldn't tell people that I was carrying the Messiah, of course; they'd have laughed us out of town at best or stoned me for blasphemy. So in a way it was a relief when Caesar's decree came to go to Bethlehem for the census. That's why I went with Joseph, of course, because of not wanting to leave me without his protection. I knew I'd be all right, in my head, because God wouldn't let any harm come to my baby, but I was still scared to be left alone.
Neither of us had any idea how awful Bethlehem would be, just crammed to bursting with people coming in for the census, and peddlars and pickpockets and just plain passersby jostling us at every step. By the time we were turned away at the last inn in town I was nearly weeping with exhaustion, and Joseph was grim and white-faced and closer to getting angry than I had ever seen him. And of course that's when my pains started. Joseph turned right back around to the innkeeper who had just turned us away and said, "You've got to find us a corner. Something. Anything. My wife is having a baby." The man looked startled and came over and looked at me; I guess he could see that Joseph wasn't just making up a story to get us in. He said, "there's a shelter for the household animals out back. It's under cover, at least, and the straw is clean, just laid down this evening. But that's all I've got." Joseph said, "We'll take it," and so we did.
I don't know, John, if you've ever heard women talk about childbirth, but one of the things almost all of us agree on is that after the baby comes you don't remember the pain. Or if you do, it doesn't matter any more. And that's true. But I remember being scared. Had we done what we were supposed to? Maybe we'd been disobedient, having me come with Joseph to Bethlehem. Or maybe I'd die. Lots of women died having children, and the angel hadn't said anything about after the baby was born. I remember clinging to Joseph and weeping, making him promise to take care of the baby and to tell him that I loved him. And of course Joseph had never seen a baby being born, that was women's work, and now that I look back on it I think he was more scared than I was. I don't know any man who could have handled what my Joseph went through, one way or another. There were times when I really learned from his faith and obedience.
But he was born - my little Yeshua - and I lived, and there came such a calm, a stillness, a peace that grew like a sunrise filling the day with light and once again we knew we were in the presence of God. And Joseph said, with wonder on his face, "Do you suppose that even Isaiah or Micah had any idea what this would be like?" But I couldn't speak at all. I held my baby, and eternity, in my arms.
