Mary: the Hope-Bearer
Image by He Qi I'm thinking a lot about Mary the mother of Jesus at the moment. It must have something to do with Christmas. In this blog, I wrote about Mary's reaction to the message she received from the angel Gabriel in 'How Can This Be?' and 'Pondering an Announcement' . This December I've pondered Mary as 'Hope-Bearer' and wrote on this as a #digidisciple at The Big Bible Project. This post was first published as 'Hope-Bearer' on 14 December 2011 at The BIGBible Project as the 3rd of my monthly series 'Blogging Women of the Gospels'. Here is what I wrote: What is your picture of Mary, the mother of Jesus? When I was a child, Mary of Nazareth was the coveted role in the nativity play – the only decent role for a girl who enjoyed playing with dolls and dressing up like a grown-up. Then, when I was about 14 or 15, I learned that when Mary was pregnant with Jesus she was probably about my age. I began to see how difficult...