Wrestling with Wonder by Marlo Schalesky

Author:Marlo Schalesky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2014-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

Let the light of your face shine on us.

Fill my heart with joy

when their grain and new wine abound.

And his son, Solomon, wrote:

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do.

So, oh, we cannot run out of wine at the wedding feast! I glance at the young couple and bite my lip. Then I turn and look again at my son. I have learned to rely on him since Joseph died. He is my firstborn, the son who provides for his brothers, his sisters, and me.

Maybe there is something he can do now.

I go to him. He turns from his small group of followers and looks at me.

I hesitate. But I am his mother; I have a right to ask. “They have no wine.”

A simple statement, and in it a million questions.

I don’t even really know what I’m asking. Not fully. Do I ask for a miracle? No, I have no reason to expect that. So do I want him to commiserate with me, to find a solution, to go buy wine?

I don’t know. But I come to him anyway. I tell him the need. And I wait. I am good at waiting.

For a moment, he doesn’t say a word.

Then he says one: “Woman.”

It is not harsh, not demeaning, but it is not “Mother” either. It is not an endearment. He speaks as if I am just a woman, just another person at this marriage feast. Just a woman, and not the special one who gave him birth. Why does he not call me “Mom”?

Then he says more. He uses a phrase that shows me the distance between us. “What is this between you and me?” he asks. What does he mean by it? Does he ask why I should involve him? Doesn’t he know? I involve him because he is my son. Are we at odds? Are we separate? What is he saying to me in that simple phrase?

He calls me “Woman.” He does not submit to my request. And I see, yes, I see it now. He is asking something of me.

I have come to him as a mother to her son. But he is asking more.

Then he speaks words that pierce my very soul: “My hour has not yet come.” Hour. He says the word in a way that makes me shiver. As if I might not like it when it does come. But how could I not? His hour . . .

And suddenly I am remembering an old man in the temple, how his blessing of prophecy fulfilled became also a soul-piercing sword.

The words trample through my mind again. His hour. Still not come. Still . . .

Then I see. He is willing me to see, to change. I thought I was asking something of him, but he is asking something of me. He is asking that I be “woman,” that I submit not to my timing but to his. He is asking me .

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