December 8
Advent 2011   

Luke 1

²⁶In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. ²⁸The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."

²⁹Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰ But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. ³¹ You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 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 Jacob's descendants forever; his kingdom will never end."

³⁴"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"

³⁵The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. ³⁶ Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. ³⁷ For no word from God will ever fail."

³⁸"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May your word to me be fulfilled." Then the angel left her.

We now move to the Gospel of Luke and to the scene wherein the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she is to be the mother of the Messiah. Today we will look at the idea of God's angels coming into our lives.

I think most of you know that the word angel literally means, in both Hebrew and Greek, "messenger." Thus, angels are simply messengers of God sent to plant His will in our lives. While for Mary, Gabriel most likely was a luminous figure in bright raiment, in our everyday lives this will not be the case. If you wait for some divine figure with wings and bright raiment, you will miss all the ways God is actively sending messages to you every single day.

Note what Gabriel tells Mary in verse 28- the Lord is with you. That's it; that's what it means to say that the messengers and messages of God are impacting our lives every day. There are continuous signs that God is with us. There are plentiful experiences wherein, if we're attentive, we discover God is at work within our ordinary moments and encounters. As I've said several times, there are those serendipitous experiences which make all the difference in our lives - perhaps moving us from times of trial to moments of serenity; or empowering us to handle what we never thought we could handle; or helping us make the absolutely right decision at the time it is clearly needed; etc.

Forrester Church in his book Entertaining Angels says appropriately, They are little epiphanies of the divine amidst the ordinary.

This holy season of Advent in particular we need to pay attention. All along this spiritual journey God will be seeking to get through to us the meaning and the message of this child born in a manger; this one who can change our lives and who can transform our world. I sure don't want to miss renewing my spirit before him and neither do you.