Waiting: Day 16

Monday December 15, 2025

And Mary remained with her (Elizabeth) about three months and returned to her home.

Luke 1:56, English Standard Version

Mary sticks around out in the hill country for three months or so, and then it’s time to return to the family and her fiancée back home in Nazareth. I’m intrigued that Luke makes sure to include this sentence in his account.

The three months’ duration is important because it takes us up close to Elizabeth’s due date. It makes sense that Mary would not remain there, potentially being an added burden to the new parents. And she’d likely want to travel before she reached the latter term of her own pregnancy. (We’ll see how that works out later, won’t we?)

I wonder what she and Elizabeth did during their time together. My hunch is that Elizabeth was a steadying influence, an anchor of faith, as Mary contemplated the journey ahead of her. Perhaps Elizabeth helped her prepare for tough conversations to come with her parents and Joseph. Maybe she offered strength and resolve as Mary would surely be the subject of gossip and ridicule, not to mention scorn and condemnation. I can’t fathom the relational headaches that would soon come her way.

Elizabeth, then, gave Mary a sanctuary from the storm possibly already swirling in Nazareth. We all need such a sanctuary some time. My prayer is that our local churches provide something of that peace and refuge each week.

Here’s something else I wonder about. Did Mary consider staying there with Elizabeth and Zechariah? She had to. The thought had to cross her mind that she could stay in the sticks and skip all the headaches. Right? I mean, she’s faithful and devout, for sure, but she’s still human.

But she had to go home, back to her life, back to the world she knew. It is there among her family and neighbors and with her fiancée, Joseph, that she will live out her call from God. Like Elizabeth-who remained in seclusion for five months-she couldn’t stay sequestered forever.

Sanctuaries are great, and necessary. They are life-giving and transformative. But we’re not meant to live in them forever. Mary shows us that. Life must be lived, ultimately, in the messiness and joy and bedlam of the world. But it is always lived with God.