mary treasured these things in her heart

Everything they do or suffer - everything that is said of them, is treasured up in her mind and often she thinks of those things, and anxiously seeks what they may indicate respecting the future character and welfare of her child. A “mother” forgets none of those things which occur respecting her children. Here is a delicate and beautiful expression of the feelings of a mother. She “remembered” what the angel had said to “her ” what had happened to Elizabeth and to the shepherds - all the extraordinary circumstances which had attended. Mary kept all these things - All that happened, and all that was said respecting her child. The shepherds hurried to visit the new-born child, then spread the news of their wonderful discovery ( Luke 2:15-20).

God’s gift of such a Saviour was evidence of his good pleasure towards humankind and his desire that people everywhere be brought into a relationship of peace with him ( Luke 2:8-14). The first people to be told the news that Israel’s Messiah had been born were a group of shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem. There Mary gave birth to Jesus ( Luke 2:1-7). The town was so overcrowded with travellers returning for the census that they could find nowhere to stay except in a stable with animals. When the government issued an order that all people were to return to their ancestral town for a census (probably for taxation purposes), Joseph and Mary made the journey to Bethlehem. Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth in the north of Palestine (see Luke 1:26-27), but the town to which they belonged according to their ancestry was Bethlehem, the birthplace of their forefather David. Shepherds visit the stable ( Luke 2:1-20 )

Mary treasured these things in her heart