Mary the Mother of JesusSample

Called to Trust

Pregnant. On a donkey. Or on foot. For a journey of almost one hundred miles. I turn the concept over in my mind, taste it, touch it. The dust, the stones, the pressure of a babe kicking against a womb too tight for such travels. I don’t want to imagine it. How could this be God’s plan for Mary, the one he called “highly favored”? This doesn’t look like favor at all.

The Bible tells us nothing of this inconvenient journey except that it happened. It doesn’t say how they traveled or how long it took. It doesn’t tell us if they had to stop every couple of hours for Mary to rest. It doesn’t say how Mary felt or what Joseph did or that this was a hard, painful, difficult journey for a pregnant girl. It only tells us that they traveled to Bethlehem while Mary was pregnant.

And it is in that void that I bite my lip, my brows furrowed. I glimpse and wonder, God, why? Why must there be a difficult trek to Bethlehem—in Mary’s life, and in mine? Why must the dust swirl and our feet swell? Why must the Messiah kick within us as we bump along? God, is there any purpose in the journey, any meaning in the daily trudge toward a place we cannot see and don’t understand?

I’ve been pregnant, but never on a donkey. I’ve waddled down the driveway with sore legs and distended belly. But I’ve never walked nearly one hundred miles with a baby playing trampoline on my bladder. I never would have dreamed of it. Maybe Mary didn’t either.

But she went. She walked, she rode, she traveled on this path to the place God wanted her to be. She did it, and so must we.

Because sometimes the journey doesn’t make any sense. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it seems to come at the worst possible moment. I know, because I’ve been on that road, the road to Bethlehem, where I’m following God’s will, submitted to him, and still life is hard. The way is confusing and painful, and God doesn’t intervene. He doesn’t step in to make it easy.

He calls us to keep walking. He calls us to trust.