‘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. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”’
Luke 1:34-37
I enjoy watching films with a twist at the end, where I’m left wondering how things can possibly work out well, and just when it seems like all hope is gone, some tiny piece of information that I thought was insignificant or some character that I had forgotten about returns and completely changes the way I understood everything, thus resolving the conflict.
In today’s passage, Mary responds to Gabriel’s news with a practical question: how can I give birth to the Son of God if I am a virgin? How can the impossible be possible?
The angel tells her that no word from God will ever fail, or translated more accurately, ‘nothing will be impossible with God.’ The Holy Spirit will come upon her, God’s power will overshadow her, and so she will conceive.
We will not face a task like Mary’s, but we do face challenges as we live out our calling as Christ’s disciples. Sometimes we too may ask, ‘How will this be?’ How can we possibly do such a thing required of us?
The same Holy Spirit which came upon Mary, the same Holy Spirit which would later raise the Son of God from the dead, has come upon us also as members of Christ’s family. The Holy Spirit is the twist, the surprise element which had always been running beneath the surface, empowering us to do things we could not otherwise do on our own.
May we know more closely the power of God protecting and comforting us. May we rely more fully on the Holy Spirit to join and empower us in our work for God. As a result, may we know first-hand that nothing will be impossible with God.
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