December 4th
| Ben and Shannon Spence read Luke 1:26-33 | Stacia Serafin, Nate Smith and Kimberly Stephens sing Mary Did You Know? | Ben shares a meditation on the scope of Gabriel's announcement to Mary |
DAY 4
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!” Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean.
“Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!” [Luke 1:26-33]
MEDITATION
Mary did not plan on being made pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph did not plan on being the foster father of the Savior of the world. Here we have the first time Mary hears of God's plan for her.
How much would this change her life?
What would your reaction be?
Whether you're a teenage girl or a seventy year old man or someone in between, consider carefully the astonishing visit of the angel Gabriel and what that would mean in your own life:
Whatever plans and priorities you have right now, everything is going to change.
You are going to have a child. That by itself is enough to change anyone's life, but on top of that you are told by an angel that your child will be called the Son of the Most High. That God will give him the throne of the most famous king in Israel's history. Not only that, but this child of yours will live forever, He will reign over Israel eternally and His Kingdom will never end.
What do you do with that?
PRAYER:
Father, we can only guess at what it must have been like for Mary to discover she would be the mother of her own savior. Was she afraid? excited? happy? overwhelmed? You don't tell us. Help us to remember that the people You use to accomplish Your purposes are real people with real lives and real thoughts and feelings. And that that is just as true today as it has been from the dawn of creation.