The Christmas story is one that is told over and over in homes and in churches from two accounts in the gospels: Matthew & Luke. Christians have heard it so often that we prove the old adage that familiarity is what breeds contempt. Some of our conceptions (no pun intended) of what transpired on that wonderful night has been shaped faulty lines in Christmas carols (ex. “We three kings of orient are…”- they weren’t kings and we don’t know how many of them there were). Some of it has been influenced by seeing repeated displays, such as having the Magi at the manger (they came to a house probably a couple of weeks after Christ’s birth). But some of it has also been simply because we fail to seriously examine the details that the two evangelists give us in their writings.
In the gospel of Luke there is an interesting detail that is consistently overlooked. I know because I have overlooked it myself until this past week. Luke records that after instructing Mary concerning her conception of Jesus, the angel Gabriel left and Mary “arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah.” It is believed that the city where Mary went was the city of Ein Kerem, where Elizabeth & Zacharias lived. The trip from Nazareth (Mary’s home) was between 70 and 90 miles and would have taken between 3 to 5 days to travel. It is reasonable to assume from the text that Mary left immediately upon the angel’s departure and in that she “went with haste,” she arrived in less than a week’s time.
Two days after conception, the totality of the mass of a child created consists only of 8 cells. 3 days later those cells will have reached the mother’s uterus and will have multiplied to more than 100 cells. By the 8th day, the cells have multiplied to several hundred cells but would still only be visible by a microscope. Assuming that Mary conceived immediately after Gabriel’s departure, Mary would have been between the 5th and 8th day in her pregnancy when she arrived at Elizabeth’s door. Now consider the wonder of Elizabeth’s salutation when she exclaimed, “And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Elizabeth called that “couple of hundred cells” her Lord. Elizabeth understood that what was in Mary’s womb was not simply a collection of cells, but the second person of the living Godhead, hers and Mary’s Savior.
What if these two women were like many women today who believe that what is in a mother’s womb is not a viable person until sometime after its birth? What if these two women were like many women today who considered the welfare of the mother more important than the continuance of nurturing those “cells” in the womb? After all, Mary was facing the loss of her relationship with Joseph, the loss of her reputation in the community and possibly the loss of her life in that, under Mosaic law, fornication was punishable by stoning. What if Mary was not willing to believe all that the angel Gabriel had revealed to her? She, Elizabeth and all the rest of us would be without a Savior and would be forever condemned in our sins. Fortunately, she believed and gave birth to the One who would bear our sins in His body on the Cross of Calvary, paying for them with His blood.
I wonder. What if all the women today would realize that a human life is residing their womb at the very moment of conception, and not just a clump of cells. I wonder, how many people would be born that could impact this world for good. What if we only believed God?