A day in the life of Mary in Ancient Nazareth
Sometimes we forget that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was really just a Jewish girl between the ages of 13-16 years old when she gave birth to Jesus. Yep, that’s right, somewhere between 13-16. It was during this age in the first century BC when girls were usually betrothed to their husbands. The betrothal would last about a year, and then the couple would be officially married. I know our Nativity sets maker her out to look in her mid to late twenties, but realistically, that never would have been the case in the ancient world. Additionally, we sort of implicitly brush up their lives to make them seem a little more glamorous than they really were. Here is what a probable day would have looked like for Mary in her village of Nazareth before she became pregnant with Jesus.
Nazareth itself was a village of somewhere between 400-800 people, no bigger.
As the day begins:
-She gets up in the cold.
-She helps her mom or dad begin the fire.
-She begins her day. (she doesn’t brush her teeth.)
-She begins helping her mother prepare a small meal for the men who will go out to work.
-Once they eat and leave, she begins her daily projects.
-She milks the family goats and takes the milk inside to the small kitchen area where her mother takes it from her and they begin to make it into cheese and give a little milk to her youngest brother.
-She helps her mother with the younger children.
-She begins drying fruit or baking bread, kneading the dough and then walking it to one of the open village ovens nearer the center of the village. While she waits for it to bake, she gets to talk to one of her friends, another girl in the village, as they both watch their young siblings.
-She brings the bread back to her home, wrapped in clothes.
-She starts the daily mending of the men’s clothes. After this she sits down at a family loom and helps her mother weave.
-She prepares food to take to the men in the fields who are harvesting grapes or grain or olives.
-She takes the food to her father and her brothers and they sit and talk while she waits on them for 20 to 30 minutes.
-She lugs back all the leftovers, water and anything else they needed to bring to the house.
-She puts all those things away, ready for the next time they will be needed.
-As the little children take a mid day nap after lunch, she is allowed to sit and rest, or walk out to overlook the valley and perhaps spend another fifteen minutes with her friend again.
-She moves back to begin helping her mother with the preparations for her cousin’s wedding, a village feast or perhaps making something useful for the home.
-She begins the preparations for the nightly meal and the men coming home from the fields.
-She goes to the village well to draw water for the entire family for the entire evening. Her two younger sisters come with her and it takes them a half an hour to complete because other women and children are there. But they don’t mind because this is when she can catch up with what has gone on in her village of about five hundred people during the day. Then they carry the heavy stone pots back to their home.
-The men arrive from the fields. If they are eating as a family, perhaps they will eat together. If family relatives are eating with them, the men sit down to eat first, where she will again wait on them for perhaps thirty minutes, and then she and the other females eat together quickly.
-the younger children are laid to bed.
-She is allowed to stay up around the fire just outside the house as her grandfather tells stories with some of the other men of the village.
-She goes in the house and takes her place in the raised corner of the room, where the entire family sleeps. The goats also move in the house because this is the cold season of the year. They all lay down, and they go to sleep.
-End of day. Tomorrow, repeat.
This is the village, and this is the type of family that Jesus, the son of God was born into. this picture of a day in the life of Mary shows us how a life of significance is not found in being rich or powerful or famous, but simply in doing the things that God has set before us and in being obedient to what he wants for our lives. There was NOTHING significant about Mary in the world’s eyes. She was just a young girl who went about doing what the majority of women have had to do throughout world history. She believed in God and was submissive to his will for her life. For that, the angel Gabriel calls her “Highly Favored!”
God does not see like we see. He is not impressed by the things that impress us. Remember that this Christmas.
About
Matt was born and raised in Carlsbad, Calif. Although he grew up in a devout Christian home, he struggled and rebelled against the Lord as a teenager. However, at eighteen, Matt gave in to God’s love and submitted to Jesus. Soon after, he met and married his wife Kelli. They now have six children and love the role that God has given them as parents.
In 1998, Matt graduated from Vanguard University with a degree in Ministry and Leadership. He is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Biblical Studies from Westminster Seminary, California. For the last eighteen years, he has worked for a variety of Christian ministries including Horizon Christian Fellowship, the Christian Research Institute, and Carlsbad Community Church.
In 2005, the Lord called Matt to plant Rancho del Rey Christian Church in Carlsbad, California. Matt’s heart desire is to help people see Jesus in all his glory. He and his wife are passionate about parenting, adoption, The Bible, missions, discipleship and helping people see Jesus in every aspect of life. His life’s calling is to present the Jesus of the Bible to people who don’t yet believe, and to encourage fellow Christ-followers to live in complete, life-altering obedience to God. He recently authored his first book, Read the Word: The Bible was written for you.
