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December 13

Luke 1: 26-38

²⁶ In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷ to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.”

²⁹ Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰ But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favour with God. ³¹ You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

³⁴ “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

³⁵ The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy oneto be born will be called the Son of God. ³⁶ Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. ³⁷ For no word from God will ever fail.”

³⁸ “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled. Then the angel left her.

I am sure that there have been times in your life when you have been hoped that you would be chosen – chosen to be in the school team,  chosen to show how well you have learned something,  chosen for a job, chosen as the prettiest, the most handsome,  the cleverest, the most suitable,  the most deserving.

When you think of God,  looking down upon the world and planning how he would bring his plan of salvation;  when you reflect upon the scripture promises long known,  it must surely still come as a surprise to recall who His chosen one was.  A young woman still in her teens,  unmarried and vulnerable.   In a relationship and on the verge of marriage,  God’s gift could have broken her.      With the thousands of people who were descendants of David, who would be in Bethlehem at the right time,  surely there must have been someone who could have given the infant Jesus a warm home,  a comfortable childhood,  a secure future. A better start than this teenager could manage?  What did she even know about raising a child,  let alone the Son of God? 

In choosing Mary,  God sent a powerful message to the world – God chooses the vulnerable,  the needy, the lost – He chooses those whose lives have room for Him and in that breathtaking moment when Mary said, ”Yes” to God, she offered up her life for the life of God’s Son and the life of the world.