Why the Waiting? (Tamara Katzenbach)

Do you remember the weeks before Christmas? The waiting – looking for hidden Christmas presents in the cupboard; living one day for the next when you can open another little window on your advent calendar, if you had one? While I was preparing for this article God let me in on a secret. He allowed me to listen in on the conversation Mary had with Him when she became pregnant with His Son. The best I can do is to share it with you now.

“I am Mary. I just went into my room to pray. Then there arrived this beautiful stranger. He looked at me like no one has ever looked at me before. Surely he was a holy man, because when he embraced me I just melted. And it was as if he was giving himself to me in a way I had never experienced. Of course all my relatives have given me big hugs before, but this was completely different. It was as if I had been in heaven and seen God. Still more exciting, it was as if God had been inside me! Even telling it makes me glow all over again.”

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 “But then I had a rude awakening – it appeared as if I was going to be pregnant. The Stranger told me I would become pregnant but I forgot all about it, and now it really happened. I have to have a serious talk with God.”

“O God, what are you doing inside me? You are supposed to be busy running the world out there and not inside me. I am not joking God. You definitively have no business creating a baby in my womb. Do you know what happens if people in the village find out? They’ll stone me because they think I have been unfaithful to Joseph, and I really love him. My body is going to change and I can’t risk that anyone finds that out now. What – you yourself are growing inside me?! This is the craziest idea I have heard in ages – literally! What do you mean, the baby then is hundred percent godly and hundred percent human? How do you work that out anyway?”

“I don’t suppose anybody is going to believe that. Yes, yes, I know the prophecies as well as you do; but God why did you choose me, and not my mother, or the rabbi’s wife. They are a lot holier than I. You know how angry I get when I see how the poor are treated.”

“Exactly, Mary, this is why I have chosen you. I am sure you will teach my son the proper way to heal the sick, deal with the authorities and show my love to everyone.”

“Why do you insist on having your own body anyway, God? It is very hard to live in one, you know. If you are a man you have to do very hard and sometimes dangerous work to feed your family. If you are a woman there are forty weeks of pregnancy for every child. You made life very hard for us in this human body.”

“Mary, this is exactly the reason why I want to have one of my own. First of all I plan to give women more importance in the world. They will always remember that God in human form was born of a woman like everybody else. Maybe men might forget, but women will not. They will always share a special bond and have a view of the body that is different from men.”

“When I, God, have lived as a human in this world no one can say anymore that I don’t understand, because I do. I shall have had exactly the same experience as the people I have created, warts and all. That also means my body will go through the same changes, and have the same needs and desires as everyone else’s. I must eat and drink; I will love, have friends and celebrate like all people. I shall live with you and am one with you already before I am born. And in the end, when I have died and gone back to heaven, everyone who joins in the celebration of my life and death will be one with me.”

“You, Mary, will be the first to be one with me. So you are the example for every woman who wants to become real and respected as leader of my people. After that no man can tell a woman she is a second class person and only acceptable if she is married. Nor can anyone expect women to stay silent and hidden in the community. They can have exactly the same standing as men if I am calling them there.”

“Now I understand God that women have a lot to gain from my acceptance of this job, but what good will it do for men?”

“Good question, Mary. In the first place they will see their own body differently. It is not only made by Me, but I have the same body and the same drives and longings. I shall do hard work as a carpenter (I trust that Joseph will teach me the trade) so they will feel better about themselves. Their failures and weaknesses shall be less important because as part of my family of companions I shall be their guide. At first they may not understand but by and by they will become one with me just as you are one with me now, Mary.”

“This starts to sound very promising God. So I shall have to wait and look forward to the day when the baby will be born. And then I wait for him to grow up and do what he needs to do to change the world. And then I wait for him to come back to fill us all. Apart from waiting, what else do I do God?”

“Rejoice and be glad, and sing Alleluiah!”