By: Lindsay Christerson, Perimeter School alum and Perimeter Church Women’s Ministry Media and Communities Coordinator

Andrew Peterson’s album Behold the Lamb of God has taken root in my adult Christmas tradition. Two years ago, I attended the tour for the first time. It was breathtaking. In the past, listening to Labor of Love, a song from Mary’s perspective, felt like a low point for me. However, watching this song in the live show hit differently. The lyrics and melody drew me in. As a woman who has had the gift of children and the privilege of drama-free childbirth and recovery, I could picture it.

It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David’s town
And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother’s hand to hold

CHOSEN FOR THIS

The scriptures don’t tell us how Mary felt giving birth in a barn, so take my assumptions with a grain of salt. But it hit me how scared she must have been - and confused. She was so young, and this was her first baby. She had no idea what to expect, how long it would take, or if it would ever end. I am sure she had known many women who had died in childbirth. This could cost her her life - even under perfect circumstances.

If I were Mary, I would have had the expectation that the Son of God would be born - at the very least - in a bed with clean cloths to wrap him in. That I wouldn’t have to labor on a donkey. That there would be someone with birthing experience there to help me, to make sure God’s Son was safe. Joseph likely hadn’t bathed before he caught the baby…how did he cut the cord? How dirty were the swaddling clothes after a journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem? There was definitely blood and other humbling substances on the ground (if you have been in a birthing room, you know what I am talking about), along with whatever the animals had left there for them.

With the relief that labor was over, there was no one to assure her that her baby was healthy and that everything was okay. She and Joseph were just winging it. If it was just me, I would feel a little forgotten. Or doubtful. God really did call her to have the Messiah, right? The angel really did appear to her, right? I mean she knew she was a virgin who just gave birth, but shouldn’t she have found a bed to have this prophesied baby? If this was God’s Son, could He really have meant her to have this baby in such a scary and vulnerable way?

And then the angels appeared to shepherds. Can you imagine the excitement of the angels? Created heavenly beings who have been watching all of this unfold. Who have been anticipating it all but are not omniscient. Who don’t know the whole story but know the history.

But now they come to share news with the shepherds. The eternal Son who has dwelt with the Father for eternity has now come to you, image bearers! Don’t be afraid - be excited! He is there, you have Him, He has come to save you! Go find Him - among the animals - in the dirtiest and most humble recovery room there has ever been in the history of birth. It was not an accident, for the angels knew where He was.

Then, the shepherds who had just received such amazing news from the angels showed up in Mary’s recovery room. Yikes. It is hard enough to recover from birth with dignity, yet here are strangers waltzing right on in with their faces bright with excitement - the glory of the Lord surrounding them. Then Mary hears a beautiful display of God’s glory - the angels who are there to remind her - you are right where I have called you to be. I chose you for this, and I chose this location, these circumstances. Yes, even your suffering and difficulty. This doesn’t seem to make sense, but I see you. I know right where you are, and I have come to you. It really is God wrapped in those dirty clothes and lying in a feeding trough. I have not forgotten you. I love you.

“Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.”
(Luke 2:19)

Mary was called to something and may have felt a few moments of confusion in the midst living out that calling. I feel that way sometimes, too.

Ebenezer

Aside from my desire to be a wife and a mother, there is only one calling that I feel certain that the Lord has placed on my life - to disciple women the way Jesus modeled for us during His life on earth. My first year leading a group, through seemingly serendipitous circumstances, the Lord brought four women to me in ways I couldn’t deny. It felt like the Lord’s favor. I felt like this group was a good work God prepared beforehand that I should walk into it (Ephesians 2:10). And it most certainly was. But it was much harder than I thought.

When it felt like an uphill battle, I remembered back - He called me to this, didn’t He? He gave me each of these women, right? I am where I am supposed to be, right? And then the group dissolved. All for amiable, logical reasons, but it was gone nonetheless. And I was worried. Confused. Scared to start again. Why did He call me to something and then take it away? Did He call me? Maybe I should take a year off. Maybe this calling wasn’t what I thought it was. But just like my sister Mary, He gave me an Ebenezer.

“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, ‘Till now the LORD has helped us.’“
 (1 Samuel 7:12)

An Ebenezer symbolizes remembrance. When our hearts forget, we can look back at the Ebenezer and remember that the Lord was faithful to that point and His faithfulness will continue.

My Ebenezer came to me over time in quiet, journaling times with the Lord. I asked Him over and over again if I should back out of leading, and I felt Him pressing me forward. I reminded Him that I was working and didn’t know if I had margin for it. He reminded me no one is forcing me to work that much - that it is good work, but it isn’t my calling - and that the work of discipleship is His calling on my life. So tenuously, I stepped out and asked the women’s ministry to give me women who want to be in discipleship - women I had no relationship with - cold calls, if you will.

He didn’t put their names in my heart but gave me a new group of women, and I had no part in it. I knew none of them. He did a new work. And it is an enduring one. I love them because they are His gift to me. Their desire is for the Lord, and together, we are “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

This Ebenezer has made an indelible mark on me. I have treasured up all these things and pondered them in my heart.

I know now that this is my calling. I know He used me in both sets of women. One is not better than the other. He has been at work in both groups, and through the experience of both, I know it is His work, not mine. It is not always how I plan or what I expect, but He has a way of doing things in such an inverted way that my expectations are shattered, and delightfully so.

It was not the last time circumstances were less than preferable for Mary. They had to escape to Egypt so the Son of God wouldn’t be slaughtered. She had to figure out mothering a newborn and start her marriage in tense and life-threatening circumstances in a strange country. She would one day watch her Son, for which she had, I am sure, the biggest expectation of greatness, be slaughtered on a cross. She must have been heartbroken. But I wonder how pondering all the things she had treasured in her heart for 33 years affected how she experienced her Son’s death. And certainly, it all became clear at His resurrection when the Son that she delivered in that dirty stable made a way for her to be born again into life like she had never known.

I pray this Christmas that the Lord would grow my capacity for treasuring and pondering. That I would learn this practice from Mary, the teenage mom who was surrounded by scandal, slaughter, grime, poverty, suffering, and the presence of the very image of God looking back at her in the face of her son. And like the angels, I pray I would be on the edge of my seat, watching this beautiful story unfold, longing for the next chapter to begin and to burst into song when the eternal Son once again interrupts human history with His presence and the glory of the Lord shining all around me. And on that day, I will take with me all the things I have treasured in my heart, with infinitely more to store.