The Girl Who Said Yes

Six months after his visit to Zechariah in the temple, God sent the angel Gabriel on another errand. This time he went north, to Nazareth, a town in the hills of Galilee, to a young woman named Mary.

Mary had promised to marry a man named Joseph, who came from the family of King David. (In those days the promise came long before the wedding, and it was almost as hard to break as a marriage.) So Mary was not married yet.

Then one day Gabriel was standing in front of her.

"Greetings, Mary!" he said. "God has poured out his kindness on you. The Lord is with you!"

Mary did not answer. She stood there with her thoughts racing, trying to work out what kind of hello this was. (Angels in the Bible almost always have to start with "Don't be afraid," which tells you something about what it is like to meet one.)

"Don't be afraid, Mary," said Gabriel. "God is pleased with you. You are going to have a baby boy, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great. People will call him the Son of the Most High God. The Lord will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will rule over God's people forever, and his kingdom will never end."

That is a great deal of news to get from one hello.

Mary had one question, and it was a sensible one. "How can this happen?" she asked. "I don't have a husband yet."

(Zechariah had asked Gabriel for proof, and he went home without his voice. Mary only asked how, and she got to keep hers.)

"The Holy Spirit will come to you," said Gabriel, "and the power of the Most High God will cover you like a shadow. That is why the holy child will be called the Son of God. And listen to this! Your relative Elizabeth, the one everyone said could never have a baby, is going to have one in her old age. She is six months along already. Nothing God says will ever fail."

So Joseph would not be this baby's father. This baby's Father would be God. And Elizabeth! Elizabeth was old enough to be a grandmother, and Elizabeth was having a baby. If God could do that, he could do this.

Mary thought about Joseph. She thought about the neighbors, and how a baby before the wedding would look in a town where everybody knew everybody's business. Then she lifted her head.

"I am the Lord's servant," she said. "Let it happen to me just as you have said."

And the angel left her.

The baby Gabriel promised was God's own Son, coming to be a human being, with a mother to feed him and a hometown where the neighbors would know his name. He was the King God had promised David a thousand years before, the one whose throne would never stand empty.

Mary held on to that promise for more than thirty years. She watched her son grow up in Nazareth, and she watched the crowds follow him. Then his enemies nailed him to a cross outside Jerusalem, and the King whose kingdom would never end was dead and laid in a tomb.

But nothing God says ever fails. On the third day Jesus rose from the dead, and his kingdom, just as Gabriel told Mary, will never end.