I like to have my Christmas cards in the mailbox as close to December 1 as possible. Today is December 16, and my cards have not yet been mailed. Addressing the cards is one of the things on my "To Do List" today, so if I'm diligent they will be postmarked only 16 days later than I had hoped. Our Christmas tree was delivered on December 2. I hung the ornaments on the tree on December 13. I intend to keep my tree up until well into January to make up for that lost time. In past years, I prided myself on having all my Christmas shopping done prior to Thanksgiving. This year, I didn't buy a single gift until December, and I still have a couple left to procure.
When I was a child, it seemed liked Christmas would never come. The December days dragged by as my anticipation heightened. As an adult, it seems like Christmas comes too soon. December is a blur, and - if I'm not careful - before I know it Christmas Day will have come and gone.
I'm thinking about Mary this morning, and wondering how she perceived the passage of time during the final days of her pregnancy. Did the time fly by for her? Maybe not, since she and Joseph were forced to make a difficult journey to Bethlehem and she must have been extremely uncomfortable on that road trip. Perhaps it did, though, as the young woman hoped and prayed that they could register for the census and make it back home to Nazareth in time to bring her baby into the world in the presence of family and friends. I'll bet those last few hours were a blur - the onset of labor pains, the frantic search for lodging, the birth of a son, the unexpected visit from shepherds. A year earlier, Mary could not have imagined this astonishing series of events, yet she embraced her God-given role with grace. "Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished" (Luke 1:45).
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