Daily Lesson for December 17, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 1 verses 26 through 35:

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

In his poem “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio” W.H. Auden has some brilliant phrasing:

“How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible . . .”

Nothing can save us that is possible. What a powerful statement.

The Annunciation is God’s good news of deliverance. The eternal became temporal and the infinite finite. Something beyond possible had to save us because we could not save ourselves.

This is a cardinal doctrine, meaning it cannot be proven. It comes to us as it came to Mary — given by grace, received through faith, and born in hope. It is a miracle, coming from the Latin word “mirus”, meaning wonderful.

Nothing is too wonderful for God, or too impossible. And when the days are dark, and it seems that there is nothing new under the sun and no future beyond it, suddenly there is a surprise knock at the door and the greeting of an angel with glad tidings of Joy, and wonder, and the good news of what God will do which we could never do ourselves.

“And, behold, a virgin shall conceive . . .”