An angel appeared to Mary.
Now this angel wasn’t the one I write about. My Sarah is fiction, the Angel Gabriel is real.
And Gabriel
would scare the daylights out of me if he came out of nowhere. Like most of us
would be, Mary was astonished, fearful and anxious.
Now, this
nice angel, Gabriel told Mary not to be afraid.
Just because he said it, didn’t mean her fear disappeared, I don’t think
mine would. However, I think it helped.
Gabriel
continued, “Mary, you have found favor with God.”
Whoa! The angel knew her name! If I’d been Mary, I would have been overwhelmed with fear. To Mary, a super-natural being knew her name
and appeared out of the blue.
Oh, but
there’s more scary stuff. He said to Mary, “You will be with child and give
birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.”
Wow! At this moment, this teenager became,
pregnant and unmarried.
But the
Scripture says she found favor with God.
Favor with God doesn’t always mean favor with man. It’s such an irony.
Favor with God brought her shame with man.
She’s now an
unwed mother. But she’d found favor with God.
Joseph, her
fiancĂ©, had a visit from Gabriel, and that helped. I’m sure glad Gabriel gets
around to fix things. He eased a lot of the brewing trouble. Joseph, like everyone else, assumed Mary had
done the sleeping thing with another man.
Gabriel assured Joseph this child is from God. Wow! Joseph believed the
message. He didn’t think he was hallucinating, and he knew he wasn’t on drugs.
When Mary
was 9 months pregnant, she had to travel 93 miles on the back of a donkey with
Joseph to Bethlehem. She was uncomfortable and scared. But she’d found favor
with God.
She loved
and mothered Jesus. When He began His ministry, she didn’t understand. But
she’d found favor with God.
When He was
33 years old, He was strung up on a cross. Mary stood at His feet and gazed up
at Him. Indescribable pain filled her heart. Her innocent son was nailed to
wooden beams and was dying.
But she’d
found favor with God.
All of her
life, she carried the stigma of “unwed mother.” She bore the pain of watching
her son die.
But she’d
found favor with God.
Life can be difficult even though we find favor with God.
Read about my angel.