In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. 

She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David.

Gabriel appeared to her and said, 

"Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!"

Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. 

Luke 1:26-29 NLT 

Gabriel is back with more news, this time not to a priest in the sanctuary, a place where if you were going to meet an angel it would seem more likely, but this time to Mary. 

Mary who's only qualification that Luke's investigation has noted is that her fiance Joseph is connected to royalty. 

I wonder where she was, what she was doing?

She was really upset by Gabriel turning up. 

The word used is "diatarasso" and this is the only time it's used in the Bible (From Luke's medical training maybe?)

It means "acutely distressed" in every part of her, her thoughts, emotions. 

And nothing has prepared her for this. 

Luke is carefully telling us the story for a reason. None of this is happening by accident, God is intervening in miraculous ways to come and join us in a new way.

He's connecting the priestly vocation, the royal line, and Mary, an ordinary young woman in a small village. 

He's placing the hope of the world not in the priest or the king, but in the ordinary and the small. 

#christmas2023

#hopeoftheworld