As we come to the end of the calendar year, it is time for some retrospectives. Newspapers and magazines are producing accounts of the major events of the last year along with lists of top news stories, personalities, and trends as well as events of 2011. Others write humorous articles about the great collapses of 2011: Herman Caine, the Minnesota Vikings, that Kardashian marriage. Recalling predictions made at the end of 2010, it is easy to poke fun at the prognosticators. The future is impossible to predict.
When the year Jesus was born came to an end, his mother Mary thought about all the remarkable things that had taken place over the past twelve months. Luke 2:19 says that Mary “kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” She remembered back in March when the angel Gabriel startled her with his unannounced visit and his astonishing statement that she would conceive and bear a son whose name would be Jesus. She remembered the warm embrace of her kinswoman Elizabeth whose child leaped for joy within her when Mary approached bearing the Christ child within her own body. Those three happy months in the hill country of Judah went by all too quickly. Then it was time to face reality. She remembered the unexpected kindness of Joseph who did not call off their engagement when she told him she was “with child,” but he said that an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream to tell him of the messianic fulfillment this child would bring. There was the long arduous trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem in her ninth month which they made safely despite the dangers. And finally, in the City of David, filled with strangers, the kindly old innkeeper found them a warm and cozy stable for the night when the birth took place.
When the year began, Mary thought it would be an ordinary year with an ordinary wedding for an ordinary girl. But when she looked back, there were twists and turns she never imagined would take place. At every point where there was danger or fear, the Lord provided for her and Joseph and the precious child growing within her. Perhaps in moments of quiet reflection she recalled Psalm 23 which says, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want….though I walk through the valley….I will fear no evil for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
For many of us 2011 has brought some real surprises and maybe even brought us to a place we don’t want to be. But in the year 2011, just like in the year 1, the Lord has been there to guide, direct, comfort, and inspire. The well known poem “Footprints in the Sand” by Mary Stevenson speaks to the truth that in the most difficult and dangerous moments of life, the Lord is the one quietly holding up his people. The closing line of the poem, when the Lord explains why there is only one set of footprints in the sand at certain times, says that “is when I carried you.”
He who carried us through all the ups and downs of 2011 will surely carry us through whatever 2012 may bring. As the angel Gabriel said to Mary, and again to the shepherds on the hillside, “Fear not!”
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