Fourth Day of Advent
Listen to today’s carol. Episcopal Relief and Development is asking for $25 to help give a family chickens for fresh eggs.
The Daily Meditation examines Mary and the process of creating a child inside a virgin. For my part, I don’t believe in the Virgin Birth, so it’s just an academic exercise. But rather than robbing the Virgin Birth of its meaning, taking an allegorical view of the story challenges me to understand it at a different level.
Perhaps it is just that there was no human being so powerless in Mary’s time than a young woman. She went directly from being possessed by her father to being owned by her husband. Just at the time in human development when she was supposed to be questioning authority and challenging social norms, she was being forced to learn exactly how powerless she was at the hands of a man she’d possibly never met. The fact that she was pregnant and Joseph disavowed parentage meant that her life hung in a slender balance. She stood only a few brutal moments from death.
It is telling to me that Mary did not run to her own mother with news of her pregnancy, but to her cousin. How many of us would have done differently? “Hey, mom, I got knocked up – you want to tell Pop, or should I just gather a few stones?” Not likely. She turned to someone who might understand – someone older than her, but not too much older. It was the acceptance she met there that gave Mary the strength to return to her father and betrothed.
This story must have been repeated thousands of times over the years. Maybe millions. This time, though, the story would write itself differently. And changing that would change the entire world.
And that, if nothing else, is a miracle.
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