The facts of life

Katy Emslie-Smith December 05, 2021 0 2

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Luke 1: 26-27 (NIVUK)

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.

Here is the clinician’s mind at work. True to his training, Dr Luke is establishing the details of the story, the facts. This is the sort of information every clinician gathers at the outset of a consultation before they can begin to interpret the ensuing history, before they can begin fully to understand the patient and their illness. He is establishing the who, the when, the where, before the unfolding story begins to reveal the why of it all.

He names a girl, Mary, and a man engaged to her, Joseph. He traces this man’s lineage back to royalty, King David’s line. He sets the place, Nazareth and later identifies a time. This all happened within a year of the first census while Quirinius was governor of Syria. He is true to his initial  intention stated at the beginning of his gospel – to perform a careful investigation and present an orderly account of a reliable story rooted in identifiable history.

This is the blink of an eye in the stretch of human history – a girl, a man, a small town, a time. And yet we see the reach of God’s great enduring story into human history as he sends his messenger, Gabriel, the unexpected visitor, to tell the first intimations of God’s mercy, his love, his grace and his salvation, to be found in the coming of Jesus among us.

Think of the facts of your own life story, the who, the when, the where. Your own unique history. May God take all the facts of our lives and continue to grow his message of hope there. In hand with human agency, through all of humanity’s story, ours included, he acts to reconcile the world to himself and to draw all things together under Christ.

PRAYER:

God, thank you that no life is unseen by you, no life is insignificant to you.

Thank you that the gospel message of hope intersects with our lives, as Jesus visits us. Thank you that in Him your love, mercy, forgiveness, grace and salvation are found, and our own history is transformed.

Amen