<p>1:18&nbsp;<em>Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit</em>- The Greek seems to imply she was understood [&ldquo;found&rdquo;] to be with a child which had come&nbsp;<em>ek</em>, out of, from, the Holy Spirit. This could be implying that Joseph himself believed or perceived that the child was from the Holy Spirit. This would explain why he sought not to humiliate her publicly about the matter (1:19).</p>
<p>The descriptions of Mary as keeping things in her heart (Lk. 2:19,52), and the way it seems she didn&rsquo;t tell Joseph about the Angel&rsquo;s visit, but instead immediately went down to Elisabeth for three months&hellip; all these are indications that Mary, like many sensitive people, was a very closed woman. Only when Mary was &ldquo;found&rdquo; pregnant by Joseph (Mt. 1:18- s.w. to see, perceive, be obvious) was the situation explained to him by an Angel. It seems His move to divorce her was based on his noticing she was pregnant, and she hadn&rsquo;t given any explanation to him. She &ldquo;arose&rdquo; after perhaps being face down on the ground as the Angel spoke with her, and went immediately off to Elisabeth. And then, after three months she returns evidently pregnant (Lk. 1:39). Mary is portrayed as somehow separate from the other ministering women. It would have been psychologically impossible, or at best very hard, for the mother of the Lord to hang around with them. The group dynamics would have been impossible. Likewise in Acts 1:14 we have &ldquo;the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus&rdquo;, as if she is separate from them. She followed Him to Cana, uninvited, and also to Capernaum. Next she is at the cross risking her life, but she isn't among the women who went to the grave. Why not? It was surely natural that she would go there, and that the other women would go with her to comfort her. But she was a loner; either she went alone, as I think I would have tried to, or she just couldn&rsquo;t face contact with the others and simply hid away. And could it be that Jesus, in recognition of her unique perception of Him, appeared to her first privately, in a rightfully unrecorded meeting? But by Acts 1:14, she was in the upper room, as if His death led her to be more reconciled to her brethren, to seek to get along with them... although by nature, in her heart and soul, she was a loner, maybe almost reclusive. A struggler to understand. A meditator, a reflector, who just wanted to be alone, one of those who take their energy from themselves rather than from other people. &nbsp;</p>