Luke 2:19    but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often.

Did Mary keep a baby book? And, if she did, what did she keep within it, folded flat and tucked between the pages, in order to preserve those memories of the days of innocence?

         What might we find if we were able to open those withered pages and look within? Maybe a piece of hay would be nestled there; hay from a stall in a Bethlehem stable. Hay now stale and shriveled, like the memory of that magic night in the stable.

          Maybe a little blue ribbon might be preserved within that baby book of hers; a memento of those first few, magical days.

          Or could there be a nail, a nail, maybe from the carpenter shop while they were a still a young family with the world before them?       Or was the nail larger, blood covered and rusty? Retrieved from an old wooden cross by a friend from Arimathea, and given to her in the doorway of a tomb, eventually finding its way into her memory book.

           Most certainly, if she did not have a real, satin covered book, Mary had one in her mind, for the scriptures tell us that she looked at it often. “ Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself…..” What mother does not posses a baby book in her mind?

          Maybe the sight of a wisp of straw blown by the wind across a dusty street on a late Jerusalem afternoon would once again send her mind racing back to that long ago manger, and she would recall the words of the shepherds, and the presence of the angels; the sight of the star and the miracle of His birth. Yes, she would hold these tokens near, and consider them often.

           And if she kept a trinket box, stuffed with memories and such over a lifetime, a short, ever too short, lifetime, what would she put within it from the day of Calvary? A splinter? A piece of purple cloth? The nail? A hastily carved sign? A few dried out thorns; blood stained and withered?

          Surely, as she picked her way down the side of that wind swept hill, her mind was going back to those things of old. Slowly, as the shadow of the blood stained cross receded behind her, she would recall again those scenes from Bethlehem, and Jerusalem, and wonder, and ponder them anew.

       The path that led home from the cross was strewn with page upon page of   ‘what if’s’ for Mary that evening. The pages full of memories in her mental baby book were torn and tattered by then, in senseless disarray, blotched and blotted with pain. Pain only a mother could know.

          Scripture does not tell us that Mary pondered these things of Calvary in her mind, or that she held them near. We can only imagine that. We are left to consider for ourselves the utter hopelessness of those hours. We will never know.

             But we have what Mary did not have. We have a book complete. We have a story finished and a promise kept. We have Sunday. Praise God and all of heaven for that Sunday.

          Somewhere, in the unrecorded annals of time, Mary, too, had Sunday. Can you not see her on the floor someplace on aged, bended knees, pasting back together the pages of that oft used book of memories? Bethlehem in the beginning, Calvary   at the end, the story complete. Rising and closing the book one last time, we can imagine Mary slowly dropping slowly into her rocker and gazing off into the past once more, but smiling this time. Smiling as a wayward tear makes its way, ever so slowly, down her cheek. A tear so small that no one sees. But then, they wouldn’t understand anyway. They can’t see the book.