Probably Not. She Lost The Son of God.

At the end of church yesterday, we sang a congregational version of the modern Christmas classic, “Mary Did You Know.” We sang it more quickly than normal, with a driving beat, and I sang at the top of my lungs. Then, after the song ended, I thought to myself, “Probably not. Mary probably didn’t know that her baby boy would do all of those great things. And that’s okay. Because she chose to be his mom nonetheless.”

Mary, 12 year old Mary,
chose to say yes to God when
God asked her to do the unthinkable.
God asked Mary to do something that could have literally gotten her killed.
It didn’t.

But Mary likely still greeted death:
death of reputation,
death of family hopes,
death of fulfilled expectations,
death of tradition,
death of childhood.

Mary also likely felt
the hurt of being
the center of attention
as an outcast.

Yet Mary chose this.

She chose it because she knew
being the mother of the Messiah was
who she was meant to be—
no matter what.

Mary wasn’t a perfect mom.
She lost the son of God, for goodness sake!

But Mary did her best to raise her son because
She loved him.

And she made the choice,
took the risk,
embraced the ridicule,
accepted the many deaths
that came from
following her call and
living into who she was created to be.

Did Mary know that being herself would lead her to raise a son that would cause the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to leap, the dumb to speak, and the dead to live again? Probably not. She probably didn’t know she’d leave him at the temple either! But she chose to be his mom nonetheless. And the sleeping child in her arms turned out to be the biggest blessing imaginable: the great I am.

Cheesecake and Soda

I have a hard time with menus—especially long ones. I look at all of the choices and become overwhelmed with the options and then it takes me a long time to decide what I want. The Cheesecake Factory is one of the worst. The menu itself is a spiral bound booklet and the number of cheesecake flavors is over thirty!

And now I have a hard time with the drink machine at my local Moe’s. It’s a computer. The drink machine is. It has a place to get ice, like all drink machines. But then it has a touch screen on which you choose your soda flavor from over 100 different soda flavor options. 100 different options! Then you press the “press” button and the machine dispenses your soda.

Here we are in America with over thirty different flavors of cheesecake and over 100 different flavors of soda—cheesecake and soda both being luxuries with little to no healthy, nutritional value—yet many persons around the world lack for basic food, water, and shelter.

I will confess. I like cheesecake. And I like Moe’s Mondays where I can get an enormous burrito, chips, and drink of almost any flavor for just $5.55. Sometimes I make two meals out of it and I am grateful. But sometimes I can’t help but notice the disparity between my life and the lives of the majority people in this world and sometimes I can’t help but wonder if this fast-paced, information saturated, instant gratification expecting society doesn’t have too many choices (and notice I didn’t even mention all of the choices that we have for watching an hour of television!). Does our myriad of choices actually paralyze us with overload rather than help us live happier, healthier, more satisfying lives.

What do you think?

(And what are your favorite flavors of cheesecake and soda while you’re at it? :-))