Lucas had finished his painting of her and an infant Yehoshua before they headed back to Yerushalayim. But he hadn’t let her see it. In fact, they were well back in Yerushalayim before she saw the painting and several others that Luke had done of her son, as well as several of herself, both holding her son and praying before an image of her son.
These images would go out with the various men as they left to go out into the world to make disciples of all Goyim.
Miriam stood, looking at the images, the eikons. She was overwhelmed.
Lucas walked up to her. “What do you think?”
She nodded. When she spoke, her voice was smaller than she had intended, little more than a choked whisper, “The grace of him who was born of me will be spread throughout the world.”
Lucas was silent for a moment.
Miriam sighed. “The work is very fine, Lucas. I understand that you are soon to leave us. Where will you go?”
“Antioch. It is where I was born. I believe I may do good service there in teaching of Yehoshua and prophecy.”
“So many of our men will be leaving us shortly for distant lands. You and the others will be in my prayers.”
“Then, Emma, with the strength of your prayers we are to be assured of much success,” Lucas said.
“Why do you call me Emma?” Miriam asked, taken somewhat aback. This was the first time that anyone of the followers of her son had addressed her as Mother.
“We have decided that as Yehoshua called us brothers, that we must therefore regard you as our mother, and care for you as such.”
Miriam nodded, “One of the last things my son asked of me was that I care for all of you.”
“Then it is right for us to regard you as mother,” Lucas said with a smile.
“I suppose so. It is will take some getting used to.”
“Life is a process of accustoming ourselves to change,” he agreed.
“Yes. There have been so many changes in my life.”
Lucas nodded. “Yes. There have been. But look at the woman you’ve become because you have gone through them. You’re righteous, wise, strong, humble, gentle, and compassionate. Women could do worse than to seek to become like you.”
“I do thank you for your compliment,” Miriam said. “Even though I am unworthy of it. Women should seek to be more godly, not to pattern themselves after any living person. Everyone who lives, including me, has fallen short of the glory of Elohim. Except for my son, everyone has sinned.”
Miriamne chuckled. “You won’t convince her, Lucas. She is willfully blind where her own holiness is concerned.”
“A woman should never be satisfied with the state of her own soul. Salvation is a life long journey. The closer you draw to Him the more you know yourself to be a sinner. Think of it this way. When you sit in a dark room, you can’t see the dirt around you. But when you throw open the shutters and door on a sunny day, only then you can see the dust and the cobwebs. So it is with our souls. Once we open the houses of our hearts to the light that is Elohim, then we see the cobwebs, the dust, and far worse, in our souls. Only when we see the filth can we begin to clean our souls’ homes.”
“You found favor with Elohim. You are singular in your relationship with Avinu Malkeinu in that you bore his Son. No other woman in the history of the world has become with child by the Holy Spirit,” Miriamne, Magdala, argued. “No one else has ever been closer to Our Lord, Yehoshua.”
“And it is because of that closeness that I am painfully aware of my own shortcomings,” Miriam dismissed. “No man or woman can rest on past righteousness. We must live in the moment, here and now, in such a way that we seek always to become closer to Elohim. And becoming closer to him, we always have more work to do on cleaning our own souls to make them fit places for the Holy Spirit to inhabit.”
“And that is precisely why women could do worse than to pattern their lives upon you, Emma,” Lucas replied.
Miriam shrugged. “It would perhaps be better to speak of another topic, Lucas. Tell me of your return to Antioch. When will you leave us?”
Late that night, lying down in her place at Yochanan’s home, listening to the sound of others in the house sleeping, she thought about the images that Lucas had painted. She couldn’t believe how beautiful and powerful they were. Were such things proper?
She recalled the mizmor that urged people to worship Elohim in the beauty of holiness. The more she thought about that, the more scriptures about beauty being an attribute of Elohim came into her mind. Elohim had commanded Moshe to have items of great beauty made for His worship, from the ark of the covenant to the vestments of the priests which were to be of the finest cloth and ornamented with gold and jewels. The mizmor of David where he said, “One thing I ask of Adonai, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of Adonai forever, that I may gaze upon the beauty of Adonai,” filled her mind and would not leave it.
She reflected in the silence of her mind, “The Hebrew word for beauty is spelled; Yud, Peh, Heh. Yud is the first letter in the four letter name of Elohim, YHWH, a name so holy it is pronounced only in the Temple and pronounced so lowly that it is often lost in the chanting of the priests. Words beginning with Yud generally have some meaning related to Elohim. Yud is also the number of the fingers on both hands, a number signifying wholeness. Peh and Heh together form the word po, here. Does does mean that Elohim Himself is present to us in beauty? If holiness is beautiful, is not beauty holy because it reminds us of the truest beauty, the beauty and splendor of Adonai?”
She rose to her knees and lifted her hands in prayer. She prayed, “O Lord my God, King of the Universe, I bless you for you have enlightened my mind on this and have given me peace. Blessed are you, O Lord.”