Sunday School With Mary

Chatter and giggles danced with butterflies in the spring air as young girls gathered herbs from their garden. They could smell dinner cooking in the houses where their mothers prepared a special meal for Passover.

As the fathers prepared to mend fences and the boys collected water for the sheep, the girls carefully placed the collected herbs in their aprons and entered the common house where Mary, the family matriarch sat on a stool by the fireplace. After depositing the bitter herbs in a bowl, one by one they sat at the feet of Mary whose face was now flush from the warmth of the fire.
She peered down at Sarah, the youngest girl, and pulled a flower from her curly hair. “Girls, do you know who made this stool on which I am resting?”

“Jesus!” the girls rang out His sweet name in perfect unity. “That is right,” Mary replied. “This stool is made of the same wood which comprised the door posts of the Israelites’ homes. Who can tell me how God delivered our people from the final plague in Egypt and allowed them to escape from Pharaoh’s heavy hand?”

Rebecca, the oldest girl, stood to her feet and demonstrated to the group how the blood of the lamb from the Passover meal, which God had instructed them to prepare, was applied to the left side, right side, and then the top of the doorposts of their homes. “Look, Miss Mary, it looks like Rebecca is making a cross when she moves her arms like that,” observed Sarah.

“You are correct, Sarah,” Mary acknowledged. “The Passover was a picture of the way God years later would deliver us all from our sin. You see, there is no righteous, not one. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. No longer do we need the blood of lambs for sacrifice of sin. God the Father, in His great mercy sent His only Son, Jesus—the perfect Lamb to die in our place. The cross, made from wood, like the doorposts of the Israelites is where Jesus carried the weight of all the wrong we ever did and ever will do.”

The girls sat silently and somberly, listening to Mary. All of them grasped the pain she must have felt as she shared these great truths, for Mary was the humble servant who God chose to be the mother of Jesus. She recounted memories of when as a young boy He accidentally hit His thumb when building the stool all the way to his last moments of enduring the pain of the cross.

The girls were able to comprehend how Jesus suffered as man and yet He was fully God, able to conquer sin and death. Some even shared personal accounts of how He was raised from the dead—able to walk, talk, and eat with the disciples in a resurrected and glorified body until finally He ascended to Heaven and sat at the right hand of God the Father.

Hope filled the room as Mary reminded them that the same Spirit that overcame the grave was living in them if they had accepted Him as their Lord and Savior. Jesus, her son and her Salvation was alive and upholding her even as she was now upheld by that handcrafted stool.
Songs of praise wafted from the windows of that house as mothers finally called their daughters back to their own homes. The time of the Passover feast was nearing.

Each girl treasured in her heart the story of Jesus and their time with Mary, His mother. All that the world had to offer could not compare with these moments of growing in the grace and knowledge of their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.