December, 2013

This is something I wrote for a ladies' meeting (I think last year). The idea for "Mary's Encounters..." came about after reading a part in the book "A Touch Of Wonder", by Arthur Gordon.

"Mary's Encounters..." (by: Sandra Clayton)

Life is full of encounters, just as the author Arthur Gordon writes in his book. Some encounters are complete surprises ... some are expected ... some happy... some sad and painful. We meet up with these encounters throughout life. "Encounters" ARE life. Life IS "encounters". Of one sort or another.

I'd been thinking of the birth of Jesus - and of Mary, who gave birth to Jesus. Mary, being the birth-mother of the Son of God is, of course, honored, loved and remembered for just that: being chosen to give birth to the Son of God. But, I often think of Mary from another perspective. I think about the difficulty her pregnancy must have been for her ... not so much physically, though that may well have been hard, too. But emotionally. This wasn't, after all, your "normal" way of getting pregnant; and then, of course, there was the fact of not yet being married. This was definitely an encounter for Mary - one of those unexpected encounters.

Luke 1:18 (NKJV) tells us: "...After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit."

"Betrothed", within the Jewish community, was an engagement-a binding marriage contract; not to be taken lightly. It could only be broken by divorce ... it was a binding contract even though the couple had not yet been sexually intimate. It was almost as important as the actual, final marriage itself. The more important word to note, in the verse above, even more than the word "betrothed", is "BEFORE" ... BEFORE she and Joseph ever had any physical contact - here she was pregnant! How many people do you think believed THAT?

The good news for Mary was that Joseph had finally popped the question. The maybe-hard-to-take-news was that she had to wait a whole year before the "I do's" and the honeymoon. Within that year there was to be no hanky-panky with Joseph, and certainly not with any other man. There wasn't. But she was pregnant.

Encounters. Yes, life IS full of them. Mary's betrothal to Joseph was seemingly one of those happy encounters. Life was good. She was engaged to a good man. She would make plans for their future together as she waited out her year of betrothal. All was good.

Encounters. This betrothal was surely one of those "happy" encounters the author spoke of in his book. He said that some unpleasant encounters fade away in our memory while "some of the pleasant surprises remain vivid for years." However, says the author, "Abruptly, circumstances arrange themselves that the commonplace becomes the significant and the routine the memorable - so memorable that perhaps it changes you for the rest of your life."

Mary's betrothal would change her life, for sure. The young virgin would become a newly-wed and take on the responsibilities of marriage. The "routines" of betrothals in Mary's village had become VERY "significant and memorable", very personal, to her now. A happy, life-changing encounter.

And then, Oh, and then. ......... (continued tomorrow).....December, 2013