Mary Hurries to the Hills

Dust on the road. A young woman walking fast, her bag over her shoulder, the hills of Galilee behind her. She has a secret only an angel has explained. And there is one person in the world she needs to see.

Only days before, the angel Gabriel had told Mary she would be the mother of the Son of God. He had also told her something else: that her relative Elizabeth, old and once called barren, was six months pregnant. Elizabeth lived far to the south, in the hill country of Judea, with her husband Zechariah, the priest who had been struck silent in the temple. Luke tells us that Mary got up in those days and went with haste. She did not wait. She did not send a message. She went.

Picture the journey. From Nazareth, the road south ran for days, down through the valley, past villages and fields, up into the rocky hills of Judah. We are not told who travelled with her, or how long it took. But we can guess what Mary might have thought about on the way. The angel's words. Her son's name. Joseph. What people would say. And Elizabeth: the one other woman alive who would understand what it was like to receive a child as a gift straight from God. Gabriel had pointed Mary to Elizabeth as a sign. Now Mary was going to see the sign with her own eyes.

At last Mary reaches a town in the hills, and the house of Zechariah. She goes in and greets Elizabeth. And the moment Elizabeth hears Mary's voice, the baby inside her leaps. Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit, and she cries out with a loud voice. “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” Mary has not told her anything. Yet Elizabeth knows. And she asks, full of wonder, why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? My Lord. Elizabeth, the older woman, the priest's wife, honours the young girl from Nazareth, because of the child she is carrying.

Elizabeth goes on. As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, she says, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Even before John was born, he was doing what he was born to do: pointing to Jesus with joy. And then Elizabeth says one more thing, and it may have been exactly what Mary needed to hear after that long road. “Blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.” Blessed is she who believed. Mary had trusted God's word. And now someone else, filled with the Spirit, was telling her: you were right to believe. It will all come true.

Luke does not name Elizabeth's town, but a long Christian tradition places it at Ein Karem, a village in the hills just west of Jerusalem. From Nazareth to the Jerusalem area is roughly a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty kilometres, about four or five days on foot. Travellers in that world usually went in company for safety, as Luke later shows when Mary and Joseph travel to Jerusalem with a whole group of relatives and friends.

You'll find Mary's journey in Luke chapter one, verses thirty-nine to forty-five. Mary stayed with Elizabeth about three months, two women of faith sharing God's astonishing work. So here is a question to carry with you. When God does something big in your life, who could you go to, to share it and be encouraged?