I love making memories! I try to be very intentional about creating ways to remember the time, the people, the place, the purpose, and the joy of the event. I am blessed to apply this philosophy of life to the times I spend with my granddaughters. What a gift from the Lord! And what an honor given to me by their amazing parents, my stepdaughter and her husband, who allow me to “BE” Grammy. (Thank you, Angela and Forrest!) Spending time with these three little girls, Celeste (almost 7) and her twin sisters, Tallis and Brynn (almost 4), is always a chance to do something with them that will help them remember how much they were loved and cared for by their grandparents. 

This love of making memories goes back to my own childhood. I inherited this trait from my own mother who knew how to build the anticipation so that when the experience actually happened, you were ready to enjoy every ounce of it! She taught me how to get excited with joyful expectations for just about anything. This love of making memories was the motivating factor, I’m sure, for my being high school yearbook editor and for enjoying travel photography of my worldwide adventures. I like to remember things visually. (So why am I not an avid scrapbooker?) 

What has prompted all these thoughts about family memory making is that Mark and I just spent two fun (and too brief) days with our granddaughters and their parents. We made cookies with the rolling pin and cookie cutters. We read books snuggled under the covers on the big couch. We played board games on a rainy day. We put together a tiny plastic vet clinic where the plastic vet helped the plastic horse get a “flea out of its throat.” We watched the girls “go really fast” on their bikes outside. We had family fun! 

Which brings me to my biblical woman for this week: Mary, the mother of Jesus and the family memory maker. How do I know she was the family memory maker? Let me see if I can explain . . . 

The author of the Gospel of Luke includes lots of details of the days immediately prior to the birth of Jesus and is the only gospel writer who mentions anything about Jesus’ childhood. Many scholars believe that the author must have interviewed Mary. So I guess we could view the birth and early childhood narrative in Luke as Mary’s scrapbook. One of my observations about the passage of Luke 2 is the placement of two particular verses: Luke 2:19 and Luke 2:51. 

Luke 2:19 in the Common English Bible (CEB) reads: “Mary committed these things to memory and considered them carefully.” This sentence follows the part of the story where Jesus has just been born and the shepherds have been his first visitors. In my imagination, I think of Mary determining that she will remember every sight, sound, and smell of this miraculous event in their lives. I also imagine those events being the repeatedly requested stories at Jesus’ bedtime. Can’t you just hear Mary saying, “Once upon a time, there was a big, bright star in the sky . . .”? 

Later in that same chapter, verses 51-52 are translated this way in The Message: “So he went back to Nazareth with them, and lived obediently with them. His mother held these things dearly, deep within herself. And Jesus matured, growing up in both body and spirit, blessed by both God and people.” These verses follow the story of Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem to talk to the religious teachers and getting separated from his parents. Once again, I can envision Mary making mental notes or maybe even keeping a journal of every aspect of Jesus’ young life so she could recount for him how God had helped him prepare for his ministry role. Her ability to keep those memories so close and to treasure them surely had an impact on Jesus’ life and that was one of the reasons he matured as he did, how he was able to grow up in body and spirit, and why he was blessed by both God and people. His mother had helped him understand his whole story by keeping family memories alive. And we are still enjoying those memories today!

Questions for the day: What memories have shaped you? What kinds of memories are you helping to create for others?