One Mad Mama

I was going home from work the other day just minding my own business (I do know how to do that contrary to popular opinion). I was behind an old red beat up pick up truck. As I followed behind him, I noticed that there was a Joseph and Mary from someone's nativity scene riding along in the back of the truck. They were large, almost life sized, and appeared to be old. They almost looked as though they were made of plaster of paris and I remembered thinking that was odd and that they might melt if out in someone's yard. They were so big that they had to ride with their backs to one another. Joseph, on the driver's side, facing to the south and Mary to the north. I got in the right hand lane to past the old pick up and began to get a look at Mary close up. She was chipped and dinged and looked, well, pissed. She was not the smiling Madonna that I have been receiving imprinted on my Christmas cards with that *heavenly glow* circling around her head. This woman was tired with a *get out of my face* look that did not portray happy. I could almost hear her mutter through her clenched teeth *Jospeh, if I have to change one more dirty diaper by myself, I am loading up the donkey and going to my Mother's house*. I could then imagine Joseph, equally tired of all of this, speaking quietly * I can help ya saddle that donkey....don't forget that this was not my problem and I did not have to marry you*.

It all was a matter of choices that became decisions. No, Joseph did not have to marry Mary. He chose to. Mary did not have to live her life so that it was pleasing to God. She chose to. Those choices because decision that changed the course of history as we know it.

No disrespect to the Diety, but I am so pleased that I serve a God and Savior that knows, first hand, his people. We tend to hold Jesus, Mary and even Joseph up to an upobtainable height. We have all seen the scenes of them welcoming Kings, Wise Men and shepherds into the manger after the birth. Everyone with a smile upon their face and not one little robe wrinkled. It was not like that at all. How frightened Mary must have been to be so far from home and the women to help her give birth. She was surrounded by animals and dirt when Jesus came into this world. Born just like all the babys before him and after him. Our King. Jesus was and is Holy but we cannot even began to grasp that let alone follow something that we cannot understand. Instead of him changing us so that we could follow more easily, he changed himself. Jesus came as a MAN. That does not take away from his Holiness at all but he was simply a Man. That was the whole jest of the thing. He was raised with brothers and sisters and parents that occasionally squabbled. I am sure that he has heard his mother, on more than one occasion yell *Jesus, if I have to pick up these sandles ONE MORE TIME you will be so sorry!!*. That is how much he loved us. He left his crown in Heaven to be wrapped in left over bits of material after his birth. He came here and was wrapped up much as like he left here, wrapped up in a shroud. We were and are so blind that we cannot see him in his holiness. He came here to be with those who could never wear a crown or a holy garment on this earth. He came as a man with very earthly parents. Parents who, in this day and age, ride in the back of a pick up in Plainview Texas instead of a donkey in Israel.