This is the love of God among us – pt3

Breaking the prophetic silence of 400 years!

Luke 1:26-38

When the Christmas story comes to mind, what do you think of? Perhaps most often and naturally we’re drawn to the retelling of Joseph and Mary arriving in Bethlehem: There’s no room. What do we do? The manger scene of course. Animals. Angels. Shepherds. A special star. Some Magi show up at some point. Gifts given. It’s a wonderous, compelling and joyous story isn’t it? And rightly so!

That early NT history is familiar to us, and because it is history retold and retold, it comes to take on an air of inevitability. A feeling like, off course it’s going to happen! But as with many important events even in our own lives, the retelling of what happened feels very different from what we felt and thought before and leading up to the event, doesn’t it? Well, those leading-up-to feelings and thoughts and anxieties before Jesus’ birth are worthy of acquainting ourselves with, because they make the event itself all the more stunning and worthy of greater worship of our Lord.