But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.- Luke 2:19

After a long day’s journey. After finding no place where she may lay her head. After being offered nothing better than a barn, because there was no room in the inn. Mary, who was great with child, gives birth to Jesus. It’s not the ideal circumstance, for Jesus or for Mary. I can’t imagine the hardship the whole ordeal put on the holy couple. But Luke does not record for us their complaining. And only this once does Luke give us any hint as to what was going on through Mary’s mind.

When the shepherds arrive telling Mary and Joseph about their vision of the angels, and the message they had to bring, we are told in the middle of that raucous commotion (do you think shepherds were soft and polite people?) Mary pondered these things in her heart. Her response is not annoyance, or frustration, or resignation. She reacts in wonder. She treasures the words of the shepherds. Treasures that cold night in the stable. Her son, the son of God, in a feeding trough. She wonders at it all in her heart.

Mary is a contemplative. She’s a contemplative because she wonders. She wonders at the grace of God. She wonders at the power of God. The wisdom of God. And wonders that after all these years it would come to this. God would redeem his people from their sins. She would be the mother of the King of Israel. How could she but stop and wonder?

This Christmas is hectic in its own way. But it also gives us opportunity to stop and wonder. To ponder these things in our hearts. The one whom the heavens could not contain, as Augustine puts it, was contained in a manger. He who has no beginning is born. He who’s got the whole world in his hands is held in the arms of his mother. Such is the gentle love of God.