The Mama Privilege

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I sewed for hours and hours on Saturday. It was dreamy. I have not given myself that luxury in a long time. I loved it. As I sewed, I listened to one Christmas CD after another. I listened to albums as diverse as Riders in the Sky’s Christmas the Cowboy Way, Mannheim Steamroller‘s Christmas in the Aire, A Leroy Anderson Christmas (with my beloved Sleigh Bells), and the beautiful, classical and traditional English Christmas in the Old Country. 

I love sewing and I love Christmas music — what a great combination. I like the excitement of Mannheim Steamroller and Leroy Anderson. It was fun to hear the eclectic selections of Riders in the Sky with the entertaining “The Christmas Yodel,” the romantic “Just Put a Ribbon In Your Hair,” and the spiritually moving “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”

Christmas in the Old Country includes my favorite carol which I have written about before, “Once in Royal David’s City.” To me, it’s a shame that it is not more well-known. While I like to hear it at Christmas, I especially like to sing it. The carol begins:

Once in royal David’s city,
Stood a lowly cattle shed,
Where a mother laid her Baby,
In a manger for His bed:
Mary was that mother mild,
Jesus Christ, her little Child.

Think back to the birth of your first child. I’m no poet, but if I paraphrased my memory of bringing our firstborn baby boy home in February, 1979, I could sing something like this:

Once in Oxford, Mississippi,
Stood a nursery painted blue
Where a mother laid her baby,
In a bassinet that had held her, too.
Filled with fear and also joy
I was the mother of that little boy.

The parsonage where we lived in Mississippi when John was born wasn’t fancy, but it was a grand mansion compared to the humble place where our Savior lay after leaving Heaven and coming to earth to become one of us.

It is a great privilege to bear a child, to care for a child, to rear a child, to love a child. What a joy it is for us mamas to remember the moments when that privilege began. Our privilege is great, but Mary’s privilege? It is hard to fathom. God Himself came down to earth, entered Mary’s womb, and was born in King David’s hometown of Bethlehem. No wonder Mary told her cousin Elizabeth that the Mighty One had done great things for her and that all generations would count her blessed (Luke 1:46-55).

I am grateful for the celebration of Christmas all around me with its reminders of what God began that day in royal David’s city — for you and me, for everyone we love, and for everyone in the history and the future of the world.

Have this attitude in yourselves
which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, although He existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant,
and being made in the likeness of men.
Being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5-8

 

 

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