An Imaginative Retelling of the Christmas Story
Narrated by Gabriel, Joseph and Mary, Elizabeth, and the Innkeeper’s Wife
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MARY Struggles with the Truth
Having come to the conclusion that I should just bide my time, I lived from day to day with uneasiness. I couldn’t help but wonder: Had I really seen and heard an angel? Maybe I had an undetected fever, and that had caused a hallucination. Perhaps I had a nightmare—or a daymare? —from something I ate, maybe too many onions. Perhaps some village practical joker had tried to pull the ultimate prank by telling me he was a messenger from God.
But what about the lovely consciousness, persistent and very real and sweet, which I held close to my heart hungrily: I am special to God. He has chosen me.
I tried to turn off the questions that kept going over and over in my troubled mind, but I found I couldn’t turn off my heart. Deep inside me there was a yearning reaching-out to the Lord God. “Yes, I do want to be your obedient maidservant. Let your will be done in me.”
I knew somehow that I had to choose. Will I believe God? Will I take Him at His word? Or will I believe only what can be seen and felt, only what makes sense? Oh, how did I come to be in this predicament, caught between faith that fashions its best evidence out of what is unseen, and being “practical” and “sensible” by putting my confidence in what I can perceive as fact? Why does believing have to be so hard?
Hidden in the struggle to know and do God’s will is, more often than not, the seed of understanding what His will is. It happens sometimes that we must tire of the mental battle first, in order to be quiet enough to sense that inner direction. So it was that, tired and nervous, I at last surrendered to simple believing. And when I did, there came a calming assurance of protection and strength around me. Was this what the angel had meant about the overshadowing? It filled me with awe and gratitude.
I went back to my mother. “Mother, I am neither anxious nor hysterical, as you imagine I am. I do not understand how or when all of this will happen, but I am ready for the plan of God to be accomplished in my life, even though that means a baby that I can’t explain.” Telling her this, I suddenly felt strong inside, and unafraid. That had to be the overshadowing!
Confidently I told my mother, “I want very much to see Elizabeth, but if you and Father will not permit me to go, I will believe anyway that the angel was real and God’s word to me was real. And the baby that God is going to send is real too!”
“Well,” my mother conceded, ”you may be right about needing to be with Elizabeth. She is a good woman and a wise one. You must talk with your father again. If you feel so strongly about seeing her, he may be persuaded to give his consent. Are you prepared to tell him what you have told me?”
I was, and through a restless night I tried to think of some subtle way to break the news to my father. I could think of none. My father was a loving man, but he could also be very stern.
(To be continued)
MaryMartha
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Email: mrymrtha@gmail.com
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