Is there anything in the Bible that just doesn’t make sense to you? Maybe you can’t imagine how miracles like the Creation or the Resurrection could be possible. Maybe you don’t see why marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman for a lifetime. Maybe you think it’s nonsensical for anyone to love and bless and pray for her enemies. Maybe you don’t understand why anyone should love God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, when there are so many other praiseworthy things in the world.

Well, the word that Gabriel brought from God was just as bewildering to Mary. For he told her that she would have a child even though she had never been intimate with a man. Moreover, he said that her child would be the Son of David, the Messiah whom God had promised would reign over the people of Israel forever. And even more amazingly, he said that the baby she would bear would be the Son of the Most High – the Son of God.

Now, theologians have been arguing for years about exactly what all this means. We still don’t understand how Jesus could be fully God and fully man at the same time. We still wonder about how Jesus could have all authority in Heaven and on Earth and yet still allow so much wickedness and suffering to go on in His world. And even our modern gender-bending culture still doesn’t understand how a virgin can have a baby.

No, none of this fits with our worldly reason or experience. Mary, who was probably in her mid teens at the time, certainly didn’t understand all that the angel said to her. And yet she believed what the angel said.

And the same good news comes to us during this season of the year: Jesus is the Son of God, the promised Messiah, the One Who would lay down His life, paying the penalty for the sin of the world. Will we believe the witness of the Scriptures? Or will we keep on insisting that everything make sense to us?

Luke 1:26-33 (ESV)

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,
27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary.
28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”
29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.
30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”