I’d passed her a dozen times or so on my way home from work
over the past month. She was always there on her knees in the front yard as the
early dark fell. I scarcely noticed her most days—just another ornament lost in
a jumble of giant inflatable snowmen or illuminated candy canes. She was just
part of the scenery.
But two day after Christmas as I headed home from the
office, something stopped me in my tracks. She was alone now—no Joseph looking placidly
over her shoulder and no baby glowing on the ground before her. Now her lowered
gaze fell only on blank snow and her face, once seemingly serene, communicated
grief instead.
She invoked another image, a painting I’d seen depicting the
hardships of the Mormon pioneers, a windswept figure standing ankle deep in the
snow, looking down at a small brown square of earth. A mother suffering the
bitterest loss.
This association brings a darker tone to the Christmas
spirit. We celebrate the baby’s birth precisely because of his divine and
redeeming death. The mother who was called to bear the baby will be called to
bear the premature loss of her child. In short order, Herod’s slaughter of the
innocents will bring that specific hardship to many other mothers in the city
of Bethlehem. The little town so peaceful and calm in all the Christmas carols
will be the scene of tyrannical brute force, desolation, chaos, and the weeping
of the bereft. Mary will be spared the role of grieving mother for several more
years, but her turn will come at the foot of the cross.
It feels strange that we can take so much joy out of what
brought her so much grief, sorrow, and pain. But her life is a testament to that
truth—that sorrow precedes joy, and that “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
