The Third Day of Christmas

Luke 1:26-38
26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, 27 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. 28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. 29 And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. 
30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. 31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. 32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: 33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
34 Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. 36 And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. 37 For with God nothing shall be impossible. 
38 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

​
    We see what we think is “the impossible” and we lose it. We abandon all hope and fill the remaining cavity with despair. We see the disunity in our church or community or nation, we see the factions moving farther and farther apart, and we want to give up. We come across cultural chaos and think that there is just no way of bringing things back into order. We see death and destruction, war and rumors of war, and we want to throw up our hands and get down in our bunker. The impossible is not something that we mere mortals are capable of handling. 


      And, of course, this is exactly right. You cannot handle the impossible. I will never heal a church or stop a war or properly order a civilization. Those things are beyond us. But they are not beyond God. “For with God nothing shall be impossible.” 


    God sees the barren womb of Elisabeth, the impossibility of her conceiving a child in her old age, and He thinks nothing of it. The Lord opens the barren womb and Elisabeth conceives possibility.  “And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.”


    The Lord looks down on the humble estate of a virgin, a woman who has never known a man, and creates within her the utmost impossibility. The power of the Highest overshadows her so that not only does the virgin conceive and bear a son, but that son is God-in-the-flesh who will die for the sins of the world (Matthew 1:21) and rise again to bring life and immortality to light. (II Timothy 1:10)  


    “Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.” We would hear these words and think, “Impossible!” Yet, Mary believes, and sets the example for us. All things are possible for God, therefore we should believe every Word He utters. 


Mary believes and becomes the mother of the One who will sit on “the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” Jesus Christ, born despite the impossibility, lives and reigns to do the impossible. He rules the universe to reconcile you to God, to remove your sin, to adopt you into His kingdom, to raise the dead. 


He is, afterall, the God “who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” (Romans 4:17) Let it be for us according to His Word.