What Mary Can Teach Us About Joy in Sorrow
The night Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph were greeted by shepherds, men of modest means, dirty clothes, and the raw scent of animals in the field. Vast numbers of angels appeared to them proclaiming the long-awaited Anointed One, the Messiah, had been born in David’s village.
Twelve years later, the boy Jesus stunned the religious leadership of the day by engaging them in a learned dialog in the Temple. Jesus astonished both the scholars and His parents with his amazing display of knowledge and insight.
Both events provoked the same response from Mary, the mother of Jesus: She treasured them in her heart (Luke 2:19, 2:50). But that wasn’t easy for her. This wasn’t a mother fondly remembering her son’s childhood. She knew what was coming.
Mary’s Treasured Memories
Mary understood as no one else the implications of the shepherd’s report of masses of singing angels and of the brilliant dialog of a young boy with men far advanced in years and education. The angel had told her she would bear not just a son, but the Son of God. Mary knew Who this baby, this boy was. She also knew, as the prophet Simeon had told her, that a sword would pierce her heart because she loved her son (Luke 2:35).
How she must have watched Him and delighted in Him! And yet did she not also grieve for Him as time moved on, knowing the death He must die?
Mary’s joy and sorrow were like two currents in a single stream, intermingled and inseparable. And they reflect, in profound way, the character of Jesus.
A “Man of Sorrows” and of Joy
Isaiah told us that the Messiah would be “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (53:3). Pure, more pure than humanly imaginable, yet surrounded by rebels to the rule of His Father. Pure, yet surrounded by evil. Hypocrisy. Disease. Greed. Lust. Hatred.
We know Who triumphs in the end, a God Who is guiding the uncountable events of billions of lives to an end He established before the foundation of the world.
But this man of sorrows was also a man of joy. “These things have I spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full,” He said to His disciples shortly before He was nailed to a cross (John 15:11, 17:13).
How could He say this, knowing He would soon be crucified? He knew He soon would return to His Father. The pain and the shame of the cross was as nothing because of “the joy set before Him,” the joy of being once again in the presence of the Father (Hebrews 12:2).
Rejoicing Through It All
As hard as it is, we must follow the example of Jesus and His mother. But how can we? To feel deep sadness for sin and its effects while experiencing the fullness of joy in God seems impossible. When she treasures those things in her heart knowing what she knew about her son’s future, Mary shows us how.
She shows us how to be truly human. Because aren’t we already pained by sin, our own and the world’s? Don’t we feel how sin shreds human dignity and purpose and man’s relationship with God and his fellows? At the same time, don’t we already rejoice in the knowledge of a God Who loves us beyond comprehension and has redeemed us through the death and resurrection of His Son? A God Who holds all things in His hands, upon which our names are engraved (Isaiah 49:16)?
All of us know sorrow only too well. The deaths of loved ones, the brokenness of so many lives, the difficulties of seeing people we care about suffer. Not to mention the pain of the wider world, from child soldiers to trafficked women, hunger and oppression, and so much in between.
Everyone of us also knows Who triumphs in the end: a God Who guides the uncountable events of billions of lives to an end He established before the foundation of the world.
This is Mary’s legacy: In this world, as disciples of her Son, we rejoice even as we know pain. We feel pain even as we rejoice. But in the end, because God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son to be born of that virgin mother in Bethlehem, we will rejoice forever and ever.