McKnight offers a chapter today entitled Woman of Ambivalence that encourages us to offer Mary a more charitable reading as she struggles to correlate the Jesus that is gradually being revealed to her with the Messiah of long term Jewish expectation. We often helicopter in to the scriptures in which Mary plays a role and, with our advantage of knowing how the story will play out, wonder why she is not more astute in choosing the Jesus that is present before her.
The mother Mary watches her baby grow into a child and then a man knowing that he is the child of God, the promised Messiah. What troubles her is that, as far as we can tell from the Scriptures, he is a normal child in every way. How does the mother see God in a sick child felled by the flu? How will this be the Messiah destined to restore her people when He is but a rebellious teenager struggling through adolescence? Do our own children correspond exactly to what they will be in their adult years? My own parents might give witness to the unexpected changes that come over time. Why then do we expect Mary to be able to theologically process the young man she is watching grow up.
As we process who Jesus is, do we face the same struggles that Mary does? Our devotional life is sometimes littered with expectations that He will conform to the script that we have Him following for our benefit. We do well to struggle along with Mary.
LOVE | ACCEPT | FORGIVE 
Just reminds me of that Christmas song (although I suppose it’s viable any time of year) – “Mary, Did You Know?” I put the lyrics of it up on my site last Christmas and was amazed at how many people viewed the post and commented, but I think we all do sort of wonder what it must have truly been like for her, and how much knowledge she was inherently given to cope with who He was. Yet even knowing that, she still behaved like any ordinary mother with any ordinary child, and panicked and worried about him which is nice too – I think it would have been strange had she behaved any differently.
NB – the “eye” avatar equally belongs to my rapidly becoming infamous Tikvah! Everyone who meets him remarks on how piercing his gaze is, and how unusual he is in his relationship with me :)) (the beauty of handrearing!).
Mary is a fascinating woman who we seem transformed through her discipleship as the life and ministry of Jesus goes on. Thanks for your comments.
The eyes belong to my Black Lab/Siberian Husky mix. She is wonderfully loving but tends to lose her mind when the gate is open.