I am enjoying Miss Mary's series on 'Anticipation.' Realism is so much more powerful than myth. Miss Mary looks at the Scripture like I do. Why did they do the things they did? Why did they say this or that? When the Bible says, "as it is written," where is it written? The reality surrounding the birth is so much more meaningful than the myths we tend to embrace.

I do not come from what anyone would call a religious family. it was just the way it was. My folks both grew up in the same small town in Kentucky and they both went to the same little Hardshell Baptist church just outside town. A Hardshell church is a church that doesn't believe in Bible education or even studying before you preach, Strictly Holy Spirit driven. Or rather, Holy Ghost driven. The King James says 'Holy Ghost' and that is all there is to it. The Holy Ghost delivered the message to you as you walked to the pulpit. My father was five years older than my mother, so she was a girl while he was a teenager. The each knew the other, but not well. Although, they were cousins. That always bugged my wife. Anyway, Pearl Harbor came and my sixteen year old father went down to enlist. He lied about his age and got in. By the time he got home after the war and a period of time in service afterward, my mother was an adult and one thing led to another and they got married.

They eventually ended up in Ohio where there were no churches for them to attend. Of course, there were churches and many Baptist churches, but no Hardshells. Since all the other churches were modernistic and liberal, they chose not to go anywhere. (Hardshells consider any church that is not Hardshell to be modernistic and liberal.) Then, when I was five years old, they heard about a Hardshell church in a nearby town. The preacher was from West Virginia, and that bothered them a little, but as they say, Kentuckians and West Virginians are double first cousins. So, we attended there for a few years until they found out that the pastor attended the local ministerial group, therefore, rubbing shoulders with modernistic and liberal preachers. That ended my church life for many years.

In Sunday School there I saw pictures of Jerusalem and Bethlehem and all of the Holy Land. Arid and dry and desert-like, we were told it was very hot year round. But when Christmas came around, the pictures we saw were snow scenes in Bethlehem. How could that be? I asked my mother, who was the one with answers. "How could there be snow if it is hot." Remember, I was five. She thought for a bit and replied, "They have snow one day a year, and that turned out to be Christmas Eve." Wow! I bet the kids had fun on that one day! I absolutely believed my mother. We had a young lady in our church who loved to bicycle. When she was five or six months along, I heard her tell my mother that she really missed riding her bike because it hurt. When Christmas came, the picture showed Mary riding a donkey. I was only five, but I had ridden a donkey. If it hurt a woman to ride a bike while she was pregnant, how would a donkey feel under you. So, I asked my mother. She thought for a bit and then said, "Donkeys over there have really soft backs. Now quit asking questions! It is enough that the Bible says so!" And I absolutely believed my mother. I didn't know that the Bible said nothing of snow that night and I didn't know that the Bible doesn't say she rode a donkey, and neither, I am sure, did my mother. But we tend to believe what trusted adults tell us.

And that is how the myths grow.

Of course, in time I learned to look up answers to my questions on my own. With that, the nativity story became more and more amazing. The reality is so much better than the myth. 

And this is why I am enjoying Miss Mary's 'Anticipation, Part One and Two.' The Jews had their own myths about how the birth of Messiah was to be, which had only a little to do with the Old Testament prophecies. They painted a very different picture than Scripture, so when it came about, He was rejected. A mere carpenter and a girl? Nonsense! The shepherds said what? They've been drinking bad wine! This man Jesus does miracles? A fake who must be stopped! The guards saw an angel and the tomb was empty? No, they must have stolen the body! Reality can be tough to handle, especially when it goes against all we believe.

Time is growing short. Christmas is upon us. Lay the myths aside and read the reality. Matthew 1. beginning in verse 16 and Luke chapters 1 and 2. This is the Story. No presents, no pretty lights, no snow, no Wisemen, no animals that we know of, no Santa. Just the parents and some shepherds beside their selves with joy. And, of course, Jesus. 

Amazing.

If you don't get Miss Mary's blog, go to Mary's Moments and give her a read.

Blessings.