Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
As we’ve been exploring the Christmas story from Mary’s point of view, there is one memory that keeps coming back to me.
Cameron and I spent Christmas 2021 in the Hospital in Mumbai because our son, Zac, had been admitted to the ICU earlier in December with a viral infection in his brain.
While Zac was on the ventilator, we were not allowed to carry him. We could barely touch him or be near him because they feared the risk of infection. He was just 10 months old at the time, and my mother's heart was aching so badly to hold my baby.
Daily, I would ask the doctors, “When can I hold him again?” Finally, on Christmas day, a doctor said, “Why don’t you lie down next to him on the bed?” As I was lying there, feeling the body of my child close to mine for the first time in three weeks, tears were streaming down my face. Zac was still in critical condition, but at that moment, I couldn’t think of a better Christmas gift than being able to hold my baby.
While I was lying there, holding my comatose son close to me, suddenly I thought, “I wonder if this is how Mary would’ve felt.”
She was in a place she didn’t want to be, in a city far away from home, forced to deliver her first baby in conditions far from optimum. And yet, there she was, holding a miracle in her arms.
When we had Zac, we never expected he would celebrate his first Christmas in the hospital. Similarly, when Mary heard she would give birth to the Son of God, I doubt she expected the circumstances around His delivery to be so dire.
During our life here on earth, at times, we will find ourselves in unforeseen circumstances. Even the Mother of Jesus did. And yet, the Bible promises:
Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. – Psalms 30:5 NIV
