Women clucked their tongues. Girls whispered and giggled. Conversations stopped suddenly when Mary appeared. Unless human nature has changed greatly in two thousand years, the Mother of Jesus must have experienced these humiliations.

Perhaps she wanted to shout, "I've done nothing wrong. The child in me is holy, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit." What jeers that would bring! And it would have involved endless explanations: "Well, this angel appeared to me--yes, I was frightened--and he said, 'Greetings, You who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.'--Of course I'm a peasant girl, a nobody, that's what makes it so wonderful..."

No, it wasn't something she could talk about. She'd had an inkling it would be like this when the angel first broke the news. "How can these things be?" she had asked. "I've not slept with any guy." But after he'd explained that this was going to be a special case, she swallowed her fears and replied, "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said." May it be to me as you have said! Afterward, she had walked alone with her secret. She could not say, "The child I'm bearing will be great and called the Son of the Most High." The villagers would call it blasphemy...stone her probably.

The first three months hadn't been so bad. She'd been able to hide her condition, her morning sickness and swelling, by visiting her cousin Elizabeth in the hills. Elizabeth understood if no one else did. That was a thing to be wondered at--that the moment she burst into Elizabeth's home, unannounced, Elizabeth had cried out in a loud voice, "Blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!"

Those words tripped a flood of joy in Mary. Scriptures she had memorized as a girl tumbled out of her mouth, forming a new poem:

"My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the mighty one has done great things for me--holy is his name..."

But the day came when she must show herself again in Nazareth. He was waiting--Joseph was. She saw the shame in his eyes as they flicked across her belly and noted the bulge that her loosest robe could no longer hide. Did he think she had gotten herself pregnant by some passing soldier up at Elizabeth's? Perhaps she tried to explain, but who could blame him if he doubted her story? She could see in his eyes that he meant to annul her betrothal to him. No doubt he would do it quietly. She knew him as a godly, tender-hearted man; that was part of what attracted her to him. Well, she would trust the Lord to make things come out right.

The Lord did. Joseph announced that he was moving up the date of their marriage. The baby was to be named Jesus, he said. An angel had revealed it to him.

Then came that awful census. Caesar Augustus was marking his twenty-fifth anniversary as Emperor and it was also the 750th year since the founding of Rome. Celebrations were planned. To honor Caesar, the entire populace of the empire was to rise as one and name him Pater Patriae--"Father of the Nation." To organize a huge, "spontaneous" demonstration like that takes real planning. Every man had to be enrolled with his family in his native town. Since Joseph was a descendant of David, that meant a trek to Bethlehem. For Mary, as far pregnant as she was, the trip spelled misery, but there was no getting around it. She would simply have to do without hot baths and warm meals and endure the torture of a week-long donkey ride. Augustus hadn't made pregnancy as an exclusion.