The Babe, The Son of Mary

December 17                                                                               The Third Sunday of Advent          

Scripture Reading
Read Luke 1:26-38 and reflect on the passage.

The people of God have been waiting for the fulfillment of the promise from Jeremiah 33 for 600 years. Mary is an engaged teenage girl living in a small town in the northern half of Israel. Her people are back from exile, but under Roman rule. Mary is visited by an angel who says, "Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a Son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus."

The birth of Christ shows us how unexpected the work of God can be. Imagine Mary's neighbors – watching her stomach grow, how could they have known that the town scandal was in fact the sovereign work of God? Trusting God can be difficult. We can't see the whole picture. God's work in our lives looks different than we expect. Mary learns lessons here that can transform the way we find hope in God. 

Rather than looking around and wondering if God is working, we can grow to trust that God is always faithfully at work redeeming His people. We can't always see or understand how God works, but we can pray with the hope of Mary's powerful prayer.

Consider all the promises from the Bible that God has given to us. As you think back on how God has fulfilled His promises, do you think of Him as predictable, unpredictable, or some of both? What opportunities are before you to trust God and his promises. If He is always faithfully at work redeeming His people, what does that look like for you?

Prayer

God, we praise You for Your incredible promise to Mary. Thank You for Jesus! Grow our trust in You for every part of our lives.

                                                                                                Aaron Thompson and David White

A Burger for a Beggar

Isaiah 54:4-8

Recently I stopped at a McDonalds. There was a man opening the door for customers going in or out. I knew he was going to ask me for money, and when he did, instead I bought him a burger. Although it was a compassionate act, I think I felt more obligated than compassionate.

Isaiah was writing to the people of Judah who were in exile. As judgement for their sin, they had been torn from their homes, their families, their jobs and taken to a strange land. Yet, God had compassion on them and He was promising them that they would return and multiply in their homeland.

² Make your tent bigger… ³ because you will spread out to the right and to the left. Your children will take over other nations, and they will again live in cities that once were destroyed.     NCV

Lepers were an invisible people during the time of Jesus’ ministry. Because of their disease they were removed from their homes, their families, their jobs and forced to live outside the city walls. If they approached anyone they had to shout out, “Unclean, unclean”. But Jesus had compassion for a leper, and he healed him.

God is indeed compassionate. He spoke these words to the exiles through Isaiah:

⁷ “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. ⁸ In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord your Redeemer.          NIV

God took compassion on you and me when He sent His Son to die for our sins and when He opened our hearts to His redeeming love. To whom has He called you to show compassion? To the homeless? To orphans? To the elderly? To prisoners? Or maybe it’s someone closer to home like your spouse or your boss.

Whoever it is, we are called to become more like the Lord, and the Lord is compassionate. Let us show acts of compassion even when it means going out of our comfort zone. Even when it means giving a burger for a beggar. After all, aren’t we all beggars?

I Once Was Lost...

I will plant her for myself in the land;
    I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.[h]’
I will say to those called ‘Not my people,[i]’ ‘You are my people’;
    and they will say, ‘You are my God.’” (Hosea 2:23)

I have not spent much time in the book of Hosea and I am not certain why. The closest I came was when I read a book called Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. This novel is a beautiful story of love and forgiveness. It is a story of human frailties and folly, but also a tender tale of forgiveness and pure love.

Hosea is a book about God's love for His people and His promise to take them back when they surrender to Him. Hosea is a lesson in redemption which holds out for us, another chance to do the next right thing.

This book is an encouragement to us, when we are lost. It is reassurance of God's love and His plan to pursue us and give us opportunity after opportunity to accept Him right up until the day Jesus returns. The only catch is, we don't have a clue when that day will be.

We are not guaranteed a given amount of time here on earth. No one knows when he or she will breathe their last breath. It is foolish to wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow may never arrive; we may not have another chance to change our destiny. And even if we did, why wait? Why go another day without experiencing the hope that comes from a new lease on life?

In the book I mentioned earlier, Angel, Hosea's wife kept returning to her life of sin because she did not feel worthy of love.  She was more comfortable in the life and surroundings she came from and no amount of talking on the part of her husband could convince her different.

Eventually, Hosea won her over, but it was a grueling story and one that often mirrors our own stories. Read this beautiful book of the Bible with a new attitude.  See if you don't feel God's love and forgiveness in your heart even now. 

What there ever a time in your life when you wondered if and how God could ever pursue you?

What feelings did you experience when you repented and turned back to Him?
Hosea 2:14-23