Mary in the snow

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.”