Holidays - Seasons Greetings!

Very early, with the coming of day, Mary had risen to go about her work. The sun coming up over Mount Tabor saw her sitting spinning in the soft, white light of the morning. There was so much to be done. There were not hours enough in the day for the doing of all the things that crowded. The days were so full; the world was so full of hurrying, pressing things.

Those years in the temple, she remembered, had never been like this. There all had been bathed in a wondering, adoring calm such as, it must be, surrounded the Seraphim in Heaven. There had been no worrying hurry; no pressing of moment upon moment: only the whole long days of all the year in which to grow and bless God and live to him.

Here was a bewildering and terrifying world, even in little, forgotten Nazareth. Men said strange things, terrible things, and some men blamed and some men praised. And all men fell to wrangling over the things that were said. At the cross-roads, in the fields, by the village well, in the night watches while the sheep stirred restlessly on the hills, men fought.

There was no peace. Men quarreled and disputed of God and the Law. And knew not that they knew neither God nor the Law. Strange stirrings, strange words, uneasy breathings went working through the land.

It was spring in the land, on the high hills, in the deep valleys. The pulse of spring ran under all. The ancient heart of mother earth could almost be heard, beating in a new, strange, expectant rhythm.

On the face of the earth, in the early morning, before the sun came up over Tabor, there was a hushed wonderment, a waiting, un-breathing moment of expectancy. It was as though earth and heaven stood, all eyes, awaiting the opening of some great drama of God. Mary saw it, felt it, and understood. Just so her own soul stood this morning, in the dawning, waiting, eager, trembling.

She understood more. Just so she knew all true souls in Israel were waiting, eager, hopeful. It might be here, it might be there; in palace or in sheepcote. But surely the Lord was coming!

Three thousand years had been telling of it. Abraham had seen it. David had sung it. Prophet and priest had told of it. The heart of the people had felt it. This morning earth and heaven looked for it. And Mary’s heart waited!

The time was here at hand. Men said it. Earth knew it. And Mary’s heart waited!

Her soul quivered with a premonition, as she stopped the twirling yarn at the hour of the Morning Prayer. For, swift as was the coming of the Angel, it was not possible that news such as he brought could come to earth without sending before it a warning, hushing whisper. The whisper came to Mary as she knelt within, where the sunlight coming in at the single window fell upon her head. And Mary’s heart was ready, waiting!

Wondering, bewildered, as always when she said these words to herself, Mary was repeating that chapter from Isaias in which the real nature of the Redemption of the Promise is set forth. Few people thought of that chapter; for what connection could it have with, what could it have to do with the glorious King who was to come to Israel’s throne?

Surely, she repeated slowly, he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet did we esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

Her head drooped down upon her hands. Over her heart there fell a shadow. What could those words mean, if the King to come was to be as men said and hoped? What could His coming be, what his life, when the great prophet had thus foreseen Him?

The shadow was the shadow of sorrow all unreckoned: of a grief like to which there is no other grief.

She lifted her head and the Angel stood at her side. “Hail, Full of Grace!” The Salutation came to her in the way of words, yet not in the way of words from tongue to ear. They were words from the Throne to the humblest daughter of earth. They told that the Throne had remembered the Woman. But Mary did not understand the words. As though they touched not her ears at all, they passed direct into her soul and held it captive. For years they held her soul captive!

“The Lord is with thee!” These were not words!

They were the Word! The Word that was come to abide. with her!

And Mary did not understand the words. Only the outer sound of them fell upon her ears, as the sound of so many other feeble, uncounted words might so have fallen.

But the Word, which had come on the breath of the words, from the Throne, passed on into Mary’s heart, and lived!

“Blessed art thou among women!”

Now Mary’s soul trembled on the verge of revelation, of understanding. These words could mean but one thing.

Who could be called “blessed among women”?

What Jewish maiden could be called” blessed”? Only one.

Only that daughter of Israel who was chosen to be the mother of the Savior of the race-only she could be called “blessed among women”!

It could mean only one thing, the thing for which every daughter of the house of David had been looking these many years!