Advent Day 14: Peace

SECOND WEEK OF ADVENT – SATURDAY December 16, 2023

READ Luke 1:26–56
The angel Gabriel tells Mary of the incarnation. Mary is the first person who hears the name “Jesus.” She is the first one who gets the message that salvation is coming into the world through a baby who is going to be born in Bethlehem, who is the Lord, and who is descending into time and space to save us.

REFLECT
When God calls Abraham in Genesis 12, he promises in verse 2 and 3: “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing… and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

This incredible promise—that ultimately God is going to save his people through Abraham’s family—rests on another foundational promise. In verse 7, God says that Abraham will have “offspring.” But Abraham’s wife Sarah is barren. Genesis 11:30 says that Sarah was “childless because she was not able to conceive.” So, the redemption of the world hinges on the miraculous birth of a child to a barren woman. And yet we read in Genesis 21:1–3, “Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him.”

It is hard not to notice that centuries later an angelic messenger comes to another incredulous woman to tell her about another miraculous birth, and he answers her doubts by saying: “No word from God will ever fail” (Luke 1:37). Unless Isaac was born, God’s people could not be blessed and saved, but in the end, he only points to the ultimate “Isaac” through whom all God’s promises are ultimately fulfilled.

PRAY
Pray for willingness to trust God on whatever path he takes you, whether to the green grass or through the Valley of Shadow (Psalm 23).