When the angel visited with Mary, informing her that she would bear a child who would be "the Son of the Most High,” she was understandably perplexed and confused, given her marital status and her humble station in life. “How can this be . . .?” she asked, to which the angel responded, “Nothing is impossible with God.”
It may be just semantics, and I haven’t gone back to parse out the Greek – but I think it is most significant that when speaking to Mary the angel didn’t say “Nothing is impossible for God,” but “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). This really gets to the heart of Christmas. It’s not that God just decides to show his stuff, break all the laws of physics and biology, in order to establish residence on earth – just to show he can do it. “See, for God nothing is impossible!” That’s not the truth of it. That’s not the message of Christmas.
God does not come to us to impress us, or to overwhelm us with his power and glory, but to be with us. One day the gospel good news will fill the earth with its power, and things will be set right – and it is God who will do it. King Herod heard the news of the birth of a child said to be king of the Jews and saw it as a threat to his own power – which it surely was, but not in the way that he thought. He would seek to have the child killed, and though he wouldn’t be the one to do it, eventually the powers-that-be would succeed. But the gift had already been given, the light had come into the world, and the darkness had not overcome it. God was with us, and God would be with us; God is with us, God will be with us.
It is a treasure entrusted not to kings or priests, but to one too unimportant to be counted, one for whom the news of the savior’s birth, in her, was (in Fredrick Buechner’s phrase) “too good not to be true.”
As Tom Long puts it, “Maybe Luke wants us to know that the treasure of the gospel, which will one day fill the earth with its power, must first be planted in those weak, helpless places which yearn for it the most, hunger for it most deeply, and thus can believe and cherish it most fully.”
I pray that each of us would be the birthplace of the Son in this season, and that the light which has not been overcome, will be revealed in each of our hearts.
It may be just semantics, and I haven’t gone back to parse out the Greek – but I think it is most significant that when speaking to Mary the angel didn’t say “Nothing is impossible for God,” but “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). This really gets to the heart of Christmas. It’s not that God just decides to show his stuff, break all the laws of physics and biology, in order to establish residence on earth – just to show he can do it. “See, for God nothing is impossible!” That’s not the truth of it. That’s not the message of Christmas.
God does not come to us to impress us, or to overwhelm us with his power and glory, but to be with us. One day the gospel good news will fill the earth with its power, and things will be set right – and it is God who will do it. King Herod heard the news of the birth of a child said to be king of the Jews and saw it as a threat to his own power – which it surely was, but not in the way that he thought. He would seek to have the child killed, and though he wouldn’t be the one to do it, eventually the powers-that-be would succeed. But the gift had already been given, the light had come into the world, and the darkness had not overcome it. God was with us, and God would be with us; God is with us, God will be with us.
It is a treasure entrusted not to kings or priests, but to one too unimportant to be counted, one for whom the news of the savior’s birth, in her, was (in Fredrick Buechner’s phrase) “too good not to be true.”
As Tom Long puts it, “Maybe Luke wants us to know that the treasure of the gospel, which will one day fill the earth with its power, must first be planted in those weak, helpless places which yearn for it the most, hunger for it most deeply, and thus can believe and cherish it most fully.”
I pray that each of us would be the birthplace of the Son in this season, and that the light which has not been overcome, will be revealed in each of our hearts.
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