Not all of the best-loved Christmas songs are hundreds of years old.
Mary, Did You Know? hasn’t yet celebrated its 30th birthday, but it’s already become something of a classic.
Composer Buddy Greene and lyricist Mark Lowry – two members of the Gaither Vocal Band from Alexandria, Indiana – wrote this song for Michael English, who performed it on his solo debut album in 1991.
Since then it’s been covered dozens of times by artists from multiple genres. You know you have a crossover hit when both Donny Osmond and Mary J. Blige take on your song.
What accounts for its popularity are the endearingly provocative questions that are asked of Mary:
Mary, did you know your baby boy would some day walk on water?
Mary, did you know your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you delivered will soon deliver you.
Mary, did you know your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary, did you know your baby boy will calm the storm with his hand?
Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you’ve kissed your little baby then you’ve kissed the face of God?
Mary, did you know? Mary, did you know?
The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again.
The lame will leap, the dumb will speak the praises of the Lamb.
Mary, did you know your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s perfect lamb?
The sleeping child you’re holding is the great I Am.
It’s hard to improve on this Pentatonix version in which 1st century Bethlehem meets 21st century beatboxing.
So what exactly did Mary know? Theologians agree: It’s impossible for us to know.
What we do know is that when the eight-day-old Jesus was presented at the temple in Jerusalem, an aging prophet named Simeon approached Mary. His words were simultaneously uplifting and crushing:
“This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel…and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.” (Luke 2:34-35)
In other words, as the song puts it, “this child that you delivered will soon deliver you.” But along the way your heart will be broken into a million little pieces.
An echo of that can be spoken to every mom: Your child is simply wonderful, and the world wouldn’t be complete without him/her. But there will be days in which this kid will drive you to distraction, test your patience beyond the breaking point, and generate the kind of heartache you’ll wonder if you can possibly survive.
But that’s what it means to love.
Could Mary possibly have comprehended the fullness of her child’s identity?
“The sleeping child you’re holding is the great I Am.”
Or as Max Lucado once wrote, while imagining what it would have been like to interview Mary: “Do you realize that’s God eating your soup?”
No wonder Christmas is associated with stillness.
Sometimes the only thing we can do is quiet our hearts and try our best to comprehend the incomprehensible.