Episode 12: Treasuring What We Never Expected | Advent Series part 3

The moment my hand met the cold stone in Nazareth, the story shifted from stained glass to skin. We meet Mary not as a distant icon but as a teenage girl in a small, ordinary room whose life was interrupted by impossible news and who chose to treasure and ponder rather than shut down. That posture becomes our guide for Advent, a way of holding confusion without losing the thread of hope.

I share the journey from jet lag to the Church of the Annunciation, down into the grotto that tradition calls Mary’s home, and how that space reframed Luke’s quiet line: she treasured these things and pondered them in her heart. We explore what treasuring means in practice and why it matters for a restless brain. When stress closes in, the amygdala narrows attention to threat. By pausing to let a small mercy land, a kind word, a warm touch, a moment of ease, we feed our nervous system evidence of safety and let goodness register long enough to become memory.

The road then winds to Bethlehem, where a glittering tree clashes with the raw reality of a birth in a cave. With help from older Christian symbolism, the evergreen becomes more than décor: life that holds through winter, light threaded into darkness. The problem isn’t the tree; it’s the pressure we wrap around it. When we let go, the symbol points us back to Mary’s reality and our own: God arriving in ordinary places amid noise, scarcity, and uncertainty.

You’ll leave with a simple daily practice for December: name one small mercy and give it ten extra seconds. Write it down, breathe it in, whisper thank you. It won’t erase the hard parts, but it will widen your capacity to feel God’s nearness, not just think about it. If this conversation helped you slow down and find light in ordinary moments, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs calm, and leave a review so others can discover these grounded practices. What small mercy will you treasure today?

Transcript

Touching Nazareth’s Stones

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As I move my hand across the stone wall, I couldn't help but feel a strange connection to a young girl who once lived there. A girl who had just been told she would carry the messiah. Hi friends. It's Julian so clever here. This is episode three in my treasure. If the first episodes were about name and heaviness, I am beginning to notice God's nearness again. This week is about entering the story at a deeper level through our girl, Mary. Because I think we underestimate how impossible her situation would have felt. We dress it up with halos and soft lighting, but the book of Luke gives us a very human detail. It says Mary treasured these things and pondered them in her heart. There's a posture there that could actually give us vision for how to carry our own confusing stories through the chaos of this Advent season. To get there today, I want to invite you into that moment in Nazareth with me because what I saw there changed how I read the whole Christmas story. So several years ago, when my kids were little, my husband was invited to be the speaker for a church group taking a pilgrimage to Israel. His trip would be fully covered, as he taught in the places we usually only picture in our minds. I remember doing what I lovingly call girl math. If I can find a way to pay for my ticket, his is covered, so it's basically half off, right? But underneath the math was a strong pull I couldn't shake, a sense that if I didn't go now, I might never stand in those places. Never see with my own eyes the towns and the hills and the stones that have lived in my imagination. So I scraped and I saved and I hustled and we made sacrifices, and somehow it worked. Fast forward through nearly 30 hours of travel, airports, cramped seats, that foggy, half-awake state, you know, where you're not sure what meal you just ate or what time of day it actually is. And we woke up and went straight to Nazareth. Okay,

Why Mary’s Situation Felt Impossible

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Nazareth, guys. Jet lagged a little cranky and honestly not ready for anything holy yet. And this was the first stop on the itinerary, the Church of the Annunciation. I remember rubbing my eyes, still trying to orient to the time zone and thinking, really? We're starting here with that moment? And so Annunciation simply means announcement. This church is built over the traditional site where Mary received the news that her life was about to be turned inside out. We walked into the basilica, high ceilings, art from around the world, light filtering through stained glass. It's beautiful, really. And I have pictures of it in my Instagram. You should check it out. But what impacted me most was what lay beneath it. And this is pretty typical for a lot of historical sites in Israel, as they are buried under layers and layers of history. So we go down a flight of steps, the air cooled noticeably, the noise from the street fades, and we step into the lower level, where a simple grotto sits behind a rail. This, tradition says, is Mary's home. A first-century cave room like stone walls, uneven floor, a space carved out of a rock where daily life unfolded. I reached out and brushed my hand along the rough stone, and that's when it hit me. This is not a mythical backdrop. It was a small, ordinary home for a small, ordinary girl who had real plans for her life. I imagined her there, somewhere between the ages of 14 and 16, engaged to Joseph, plotting out her future in that hopeful way young brides do. I imagined her thinking about her home, thinking about routines, thinking about the children she might have in the very normal, very expected way. And then the angel Gabriel stands in this room, this actual space. I realized in that moment that the news he brought would not have landed as romantic or dreamy. It would have been disorienting, possibly terrifying. As my hand stayed on the stone, I found myself thinking, how did you do this, Mary? How did you not let fear swallow you whole? How did you trust God when the life you'd pictured was suddenly out of reach? Standing there, she felt less like a distant saint and more like a girl

Entering The Grotto’s Ordinary Home

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whose story was interrupted in a way that would shake any of us. Later in Luke's gospel, after the shepherds visit the newborn Jesus, after all the noise and surprise, Luke includes this one quiet line. Luke 2.19 that Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. That verb treasured is more than just sentimentalness. In the original language, it carries the scent of storing something deeply, keeping it safe, turning it over slowly in the mind and heart until more meaning emerges. Mary doesn't get a full explanation wrapped in certainty. She doesn't get a step-by-step plan or a guarantee that this calling won't crush her. What she gets is a series of bewildering events and a God who keeps showing up in the middle of them. Her response is not to shut down, it's to hold. So she treasures, she ponders, she lets what God is doing sink in gradually, even while parts of her story still feel confusing. Luke doesn't tell us that Joseph treasured and pondered, or that the shepherds did, only Mary. We get a glimpse of her interior life, her way of staying open in a situation that could have closed her heart. And here's where I find this fascinating on every human level. When life is unpredictable, or when we feel cornered, you know, by finances or health issues or strain relationships or work pressure, the amygdala in our brain goes into high alert. Now you've heard me mention that before, the amygdala, but what it is is actually the word amygdala itself is Greek for almond. It's a pair of almond-shaped structures deep in the brain's temporal lobes, acting as the emotional center. It's crucial for processing fear and pleasure and social cues and forming emotional memories. It's a key part of the limbic system, linking emotions to memories and influencing decision-making and motivation and aggression. So when that part of our brain goes into high alert, it's scanning for danger. It narrows our attention so we fixate on what feels wrong or threatening or unfinished. When this happened, joy doesn't disappear, but our capacity to notice it shrinks. While treasuring what Mary did is a different kind of response. When you pause, even briefly, to let something good land, or a kind word, or a warm touch, or a small answered prayer, or a moment of unexpected ease, you're giving your nervous system new information. It's saying, You're safe enough to take this in right now. Or the amygdala quiets a little, and the part of your brain that stores memory begins to tag that moment as meaningful instead of disposable. You're allowing real goodness to register. That's what Mary is doing, but refusing to let the hardness have the final say about what her life means. Treasuring becomes a form of resistance against a world then and now that pulls us toward anxiety and away from wonder. A few days after Nazareth, we were able to travel to Bethlehem. Can you believe it? The town of Bethlehem. Benders calling out, children darting between grown-ups, music bouncing off stone walls, and in the center of all of it stood an enormous Christmas tree covered in lights and ornaments, towering above everything else. I remember standing there, feeling oddly unsettled.

Treasured And Pondered: Mary’s Posture

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The tree felt too modern, too loud, too removed from the gritty reality of labor and birth and a family turned away from any decent place to stay. Earlier that day, a local had walked us to a cave-like area in the hillside where animals would have been kept. The air was cool, the earth was packed around it, there were stone walls that held old smells of animals and hay. It was small, not picturesque, not like a cute barn, the kind of place like we all envision the manger to be. It was the kind of place you use because you've run out of options. That's the setting for the birth of Jesus. So standing in that square, looking at that massive, glittering tree, it felt like two stories, stacked on top of each other, but out of sync. And then slowly it started to make sense. Another guide had reminded us that Christians began using evergreens long before Christmas became what it is now. Trees that stay green in winter become a sign, a way of saying life can endure even when everything looks barren, hope can hold on, even when the landscape feels cold and stripped down. And a tree with lights represents a light in the darkness. I thought about the tree in my own living room, standing there, um, undecorated, and it's the middle of December. I'm way behind schedule, and it's almost accusing me every time I walk past it. And I realized maybe the invitation is not to make it magical, but to let that simple tree remind me of Mary's reality and of my own. A young girl asked to carry an impossible story. A family doing their best with what they had. A god who chose a cave and a census and a world in chaos as the setting for his arrival. The tree is not the problem, but the pressure we've wrapped around it is when I let go of that, the tree turned into something I could treasure. A sign in my living room that light has entered the messy, unfinished places and intends to stay. So, what do we do with all of this in an already full December? Well, here's a simple practice. For the weeks ahead, inspired by Mary's posture. Once each day, name one moment that felt like a small mercy and give it 10 extra seconds of your attention. Nothing elaborate, but you should definitely write it down. It might be your child leaning against you on the couch, a text from someone who remembered you, a quiet car ride for once, laughter at the dinner table, a breath over your shoulders finally drop. And when you notice it, pause. Let yourself feel it. Instead of rushing to the next thing, you might whisper, thank you for this, Lord. Or simply sit in the quiet of it. That small act of treasuring doesn't erase the hard parts of your life, friend. It doesn't fix your budget or your renovations or take away your grief. But it does something very real inside you. It makes room for God to be felt, not just disgust. This week, consider carrying this verse with you as a reminder from Luke. Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. You don't have to be Mary, you don't have to have her kind of courage, but you can borrow her posture even a little. You can practice holding what God is doing in your life right now, even if it feels confusing, and trust that meaning often unfolds slowly.

The Amygdala And Noticing Goodness

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And so here we are at the end of the episode, where I get to speak a blessing over you. So take a deep breath, friend, and let these words just wash over you. Let them sink in. Let your soul slow down for a moment to breathe. Dear friend, may a small mercy find you this week. Something easy to miss, yet quietly kind. May your heart have enough room to pause for it. Even if only for a moment. May that pause become a place. Next time in episode four, we'll talk about me. And what it means for him to be present right in the middle of the mess we're actually living in. There's still more light ahead, friend. You don't have to run to meet it. You can walk. One treasured moment at a time.