An Angel Suddenly Appears

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 fiancé, 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.

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