Luke's account of the nativity was so detailed and personal.  After sifting through all the written accounts, he must have interviewed Mary (Luke 1:1-4).  When his 'notebook' was full of verbatim comments, we can imagine him asking, ‘So, after the shepherds had left, and there was just Jesus with you and Joseph, what did you think, how did you feel?’  He simply recorded, "Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart".

A common business folly is to try to absorb too much information, filter out all you do not understand and then assume what you already thought!  But Mary was wise.  In the past year she had seen an angel, heard that she was to be the mother of God's Son, risked a broken engagement and possible public stoning, was sent away to her elderly relative who was also miraculously pregnant, received further prophecy about her future role, wrote a worship song (Luke 1:26-56); then she travelled more than 90 miles just before her due date, delivered the Saviour of the world in an outhouse and laid Him in an animal feeding trough, before shepherds came to visit on the instruction of a chorus of angels (Luke 2:1-20).  

All that was far too much information for the teenage mother to process and resolve immediately; but she knew that all of it was true and so precious that it must not be filtered out.  So, she carefully filed the facts in her mind.  Through the rest of her life she thought about each amazing message and event, waiting for God to show her what they all meant and how they fitted together.  The shepherds had less to process, but they praised God because they had meditated on the extraordinary events.  Everything the angel said was proved to be true.  They heard God’s revelation about the Saviour Messiah, they ran to meet Him and told everybody that God had come (Luke 2:8-18).  The more they thought about it, the more praise filled their hearts.  And, clearly, Mary did the same while talking to Luke.

Meditation is essential for followers of Jesus.  But it is a quite different kind of meditation than for those who believe it is about emptying the mind.  Far from it!  Godly meditation takes all the information God supplies with the circumstances He allows (Psalm 119:15).  Treasuring them, godly people place them before the Lord, asking for His help to understand the next step, and trusting Him for all that they do not understand (Deuteronomy 29:29).  Mary was to spend her life unpacking that first year, and the many other surprises along the way (Luke 2:51).  But she had grasped one of the great secrets of godliness: to reject nothing God sends and to wait on Him for understanding and wisdom.  That takes time and trust; but that kind of meditation marks out those men or women who are truly godly.