Who could be happier than Mary, the mother of the Messiah?

In Luke 11:27 - 28 Jesus tells who is happier than His own mother? Let's look...

Have you ever read a passage of Scripture and it just seems like "Did God really just say that?" Well, I had one of those moments as I read Luke 11 today. Let's look at a blessing a woman in the crowd shouts towards Jesus in verse 27 and 28, and Jesus' amazing response:

As he [Jesus] was speaking, a woman in the crowd called out, "God bless your mother, the womb from which you came, and the breasts that nursed you!" He replied, "But even more blessed are all who hear the word of God and put it into practice."

The context to this story is this: Jesus had just finished casting out "yet another demon" from some man. The crowd watching Jesus was absolutely amazed, but some of them said to themselves that Satan was empowering Jesus to do this miracle. Jesus solidly rebuked those in the crowd making these false claims with some really simple and very obvious logical reasoning about how a house divided cannot stand. The woman in the crowd I quoted above shouted out her blessing to Jesus after all this occurred. Certainly she was amazed by the Lord's demonstration of His deity.

But did you "hear" what Jesus said in response to this woman's blessing? He said folks who "hear the Word of God and practice it" are happier than His own mother. Boy, if you are like me, you are so tempted to zoom past that thought real fast and say, "Yeah, heard that kind of thing before. We have yet another blessed saying in the Bible." Yet, this is an extremely powerful statement and worth meditating on for a few moments (and probably a lifetime. 

As we have just come through another Christmas season, we Christians are reminded and celebrate once again the Lord's coming in human form to this earth to rescue humanity from our lost predicament. Christmas is a pretty special time of year for followers of Christ. For one moment, can you imagine the happiness and joy that Mary, his mother, must have had at that first Christmas, when she birthed the Messiah, God in human flesh? I bet she and Joseph were grinning ear to ear as they contemplated the jack pot they just hit. It's not every day you give birth to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It really is hard to imagine an any more joyous occasion anyone could ever have on this planet at any time, except the Lord Jesus tells us precisely how to experience more happiness than Mary had.

So in the year of fruit bearing at our church, I think this passage is just another little tremendous insight from Scripture into the outcome of a fruit-bearing life. If you "hear the Word" and "put her into practice," Jesus, God incarnate, the Creator and Sustainer of all life, says you will bear lots of fruit (as we saw in a previous blog entry) and have more happiness than his own blessed mother that brought God into this world.

As an American living in our "pleasure and thrill seeking" society, think about what Christ says here for a few moments. Do you honestly believe Him?