Getting Ready: Advent Reflections, Luke 1:30-33

‘But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favour with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 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, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”’

Luke 1:30-33


Writer and preacher Frederick Buechner once said that ‘The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.’

The quote is beautiful, but it doesn’t make it easy to find where that place exactly is.

Today we read about God’s call upon Mary. It is the second part of God’s message to her. Yesterday we looked at the first part, that God highly favours Mary. Today we see that this favour leads to the unique, wondrous task God has for Mary: to give birth to the Son of God.

I understand the two parts of the message to be connected. Mary’s task to bear Jesus grows out of God’s favour for her. It is as though the angel says, ‘You have found favour with God, (therefore) you will conceive and give birth.’ Mary’s calling comes from God’s love.

Perhaps that is the nature of God’s calling upon our lives too. If we’re ever wondering what God’s purposes for us are, we must first know that God loves us, because that’s where God’s purposes come from.

God’s love comes before any task God has for us to do. It is the foundation and material for who God is preparing us to become in Christ. Perhaps it is only when we accept this love that we can then hear God’s call.

Our tasks will be different from one another’s, and different from Mary’s. But they are united because they all come from God’s love. God loves us, and this love is where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.