NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD

We have a record of what Mary said to God, likely prayed it to God, yet it is almost poetic in nature, refined by a middle teens child, more a woman at that age than overindulged contemporary girls now. She worked, hauled water, firewood, gardened, cooked soup, gathered eggs, baked bread, washed clothes by hand. She had seen other women give birth. She knew how babies came. She was in the betrothal year of an arranged marriage when Gabriel, an angelic creature convincingly communicated with her. Her childlike faith believed his forecast that she would now bear an adult-sized responsibility. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Phil 4:13). She was unfamiliar with those words, which were written five decades later by Paul whose life was transformed by the person to whom Gabriel announced she would give birth. She did however understand the inner peace about which Paul would write. The conception of the embryo within her without human impregnation was incomprehensible then even as it is now. Gabriel told her, "nothing is impossible with God." She told Gabriel, "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said." And it was.

A SUPER NATURAL BABY FOR MARY

Mary and Jesus by Ron Unruh, 2011

Luke 1:32 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 the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."

What immediately comes to my mind is the divine sovereignty of the baby who will be born to this unwed virgin woman, a girl really, to whom the angel Gabriel announced this unprecedented, never to be repeated event. Her name is Mary and God's Holy Spirit, who hovered over the waters at creation, will come upon her, overshadow her really, and when he does, conception will occur, immaculate to say the least, impeccable, flawless, faultless, without a trace of sexuality, simply divine origination, the Word becoming flesh. The Word, who spoke and without whom nothing was created that was created, became a human being to grow up and to live among our kind. He became part of our history. His name would be called Jesus. Without sin of any kind in word, deed or even thought, he, the Son of God, entered earth's population in order to be put to death in a most public manner, not for the purpose of exacting human justice, but for the inexplicable purpose of atoning for human sinners' sins. God gave his Son. Everyone who believes in the Son receives not only forgiveness but life in the name of Jesus. Life that will transcend this life and thereafter to live forever with the Father, just as Jesus himself does now. And even when he was here, Jesus encouraged us to call his Father, our Father. Christ's kingdom will be forever, the angel told Mary, and the Bible instructs us that this kingdom is now, already, here in us, over us, around us. It's a secure place in which by faith we live while within the cultures of this world we serve as kingdom lights and kingdom salt. We help people see and taste that the LORD Jesus was the visible image of the invisible God when he was here and that he is presently the one who will gather us home where there is in store for us more than our minds can imagine. In the meantime, he is able to do for us very much more than everything that we may ask of him.