{"id":357,"date":"2020-12-21T10:15:37","date_gmt":"2020-12-21T15:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=357"},"modified":"2020-12-21T10:15:37","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T15:15:37","slug":"mary-did-you-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/21\/mary-did-you-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary, Did You Know?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Not all of the best-loved Christmas songs are hundreds of years old.

Mary, Did You Know? <\/em>hasn\u2019t yet celebrated its 30th<\/sup> birthday, but it\u2019s already become something of a classic.

Composer Buddy Greene and lyricist Mark Lowry \u2013 two members of the Gaither Vocal Band from Alexandria, Indiana \u2013 wrote this song for Michael English, who performed it on his solo debut album in 1991. 

Since then it\u2019s 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?<\/em>
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?<\/em>
This child that you delivered will soon deliver you.<\/em>

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?<\/em>

Mary, did you know?  Mary, did you know?<\/em>

The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again.<\/em>
The lame will leap, the dumb will speak the praises of the Lamb.<\/em>

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\u2019s perfect lamb?<\/em>
The sleeping child you\u2019re holding is the great I Am.<\/em>

It\u2019s hard to improve on this Pentatonix version<\/a> in which 1st<\/sup> century Bethlehem meets 21st<\/sup> century beatboxing.    

So what exactly did Mary know?  Theologians agree:  It\u2019s 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:

\u201cThis child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel\u2026and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.\u201d (Luke 2:34-35)

In other words, as the song puts it, \u201cthis child that you delivered will soon deliver you.\u201d  But along the way your heart will be broken into a million little pieces. <\/em>

An echo of that can be spoken to every mom:  Your child is simply wonderful, and the world wouldn\u2019t 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\u2019ll wonder if you can possibly survive.

But that\u2019s what it means to love.   

Could Mary possibly have comprehended the fullness of her child\u2019s identity? 

\u201cThe sleeping child you\u2019re holding is the great I Am.\u201d

Or as Max Lucado once wrote, while imagining what it would have been like to interview Mary: \u201cDo you realize that\u2019s God eating your soup?\u201d

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.
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Not all of the best-loved Christmas songs are hundreds of years old. Mary, Did You Know? hasn\u2019t yet celebrated its 30th birthday, but it\u2019s already become something of a classic. Composer Buddy Greene and lyricist Mark Lowry \u2013 two members of the Gaither Vocal Band from Alexandria, Indiana \u2013 wrote this song for Michael English, who performed it on his… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,23,115],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas-carols","tag-incarnation","tag-mary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":359,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}