Luke 1:26,27 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 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 second angelic encounter in the Christmas story. It is a story full of such encounters. This more than anything else convinces me of the veracity of this story – that God's emissaries were scurrying here and there covering every situation. It is full of angelic activity, this preparation for the arrival of the Son of God.

 

The sixth month, in the context, would have been the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, so John the Baptist would be six months older than his ‘cousin' Jesus. We are given lots of domestic information. Mary is a young girl who lives in Nazareth, in the northern end of the country, and she is engaged to Joseph who also lives there and who is of the family line of King David.

 

There it is. So far there is nothing spectacular about this information; indeed a very ordinary situation. So often we expect God to come to only special situations, but He doesn't; He delights in coming into our ordinary, everyday events and transforming them. That is what we often struggle with, the thought that God can come and change my circumstances, but that is exactly it, He can. What is more He does it because He wants to, He wants to create something more, something better than you have at the moment. Are you open for that to happen?