Mary pondered them in her heart...

There's a little phrase that occurs a couple of times in the gospels....

Just after the shepherds had left the happy family, Luke tells us "Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart" (2:19).

And shortly later in the same gospel, when Jesus is a young boy and Mary and Jospeh have just found him after losing him for a short time in Jeruslaem, Luke writes, "But his mother treasured all these things in her heart." (2:51).

Imagine for a moment.....Mary...a young teenage mum...and all the incredible, slightly incredulous even, things that she had been witness to. Visits from angels; she was pregnant despite never having had sex; apparently she had just given birth to God's promised Messiah; the visit from the shepherds and their story of angels; and a bit later the visit of the Magi. Certainly not your average birth story! Luke goes out of his way to record Mary's faithful response (1:46-56), but he also reminds us that even in faith there is room for "pondering"...for taking what we know, what we've been told, what we've seen....and allowing it to sit in our hearts...allowing us time to reflect on it...allowing time for it to work on us and in us.

There's a difference between being told something and really understanding it for yourself. And I think for Mary, it was possibly much later in Jesus' life that she really began to understand just who her 'son' was.

This coming term we're going to be journeying through the gospel of Mark together, to try and encounter just who this Jesus was and is. We've just celebrated his birth....in a few months we will remember his death and resurrection...so let's take some time together to immerse ourselves in the bits inbetween. Let's learn together...let's ponder afresh some of the familiar accounts from Mark's gospel and see what God might be wanting to teach us from them.

We'll be launching into our new series on Sunday 8th January.