Luke 11:27, 28

While Jesus was speaking, a woman in the crowd shouted, "How blessed is the mother who gave birth to you and the breasts that nursed you." Jesus replied, "Rather, how blessed are those who hear and obey God's word."

It is fondly imagined by some that it must have been a very special privilege to have been the mother of our Lord, because they think that she had the benefit of looking into his very heart in a way which we cannot hope to do. There may be an appearance of plausibility in the supposition, but not much. We do not know that Mary knew more than others; what she did know she did well to lay up in her heart; but she does not appear from anything we read in the scriptures to have been a better-instructed believer than any other of Christ's disciples. All that she knew, we may also discover. Do you wonder that we should say this? Here is a text to prove it: "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant." Remember the Master's words, "I no longer call you servants, because servants don't know what their master is doing. But now I call you friends, because I have told you everything that my Father told me." So blessedly does this Divine Revealer of secrets tell us his heart, that he kept nothing back that is profitable to us. His own assurance is, "If it were not so, I would have told you." Doesn't he, this very day, show himself to us as he does not to the world? It is so, therefore we will not ignorantly cry out, "Blessed is the womb that bore you," but we will intelligently praise God that, having heard the Word and kept it, we first of all have as true a communion with the Saviour as the Virgin Mary had, and in the second place as true an insight into the secrets of his heart as she can be supposed to have obtained. Happy my soul to be so privileged!