The rebirth of hope is, essentially, the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Last week in my dad's sermon he shared the stories of two people who were impacted by this birth, one of which is a young girl named Mary.
We all know Mary as the mother of Jesus, but how often do we stop to think of her as a young, innocent, fifteen year old girl, carrying a child? For starters, it was totally and completely inappropriate for her to be pregnant and not married. In that day and time, stoning was the most common punishment for a pregnancy out of wedlock. But not only that, Mary was claiming to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit!!! Now who on earth would believe something like that? No one. And no one did believe her. She was completely on her own.
In the second chapter of Luke, we find the story of the birth of Jesus. However, the verses I want to point out are verses 18-19. They say:
"And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them,
But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart."
I just think about it this way. I honestly have a hard time explaining to people that when the Spirit of God comes over me I speak in tongues. How much harder must it have been for Mary to tell her family, her friends, Joseph, that the Spirit of God came over her and got her pregnant? I mean, would you believe it? This was a physical miracle that took place within Mary, a physical miracle performed by a spiritual God, and this just seems unlikely. All Mary could possibly do was to ponder, to think deeply about what was going on inside of her. Physically, she was pregnant, but spiritually, and really in every way, she was carrying the future Messiah, the Savior of the world.
This is what gets me. We try to separate the Holy Spirit from our physical lives. When it comes to sickness, relationships, all of our human needs for some reason we have trouble believing God wants to take part in solving our problems. But the truth is, He came to earth by his spirit impregnating a 15 year old girl! Cancer is nothing to him! Death is nothing! broken relationships are his specialty! We underestimate God so often we should be ashamed of ourselves!
The birth of Jesus was, in so many ways, a rebirth of hope. For the Israelites, they had waited hundreds of years for a Messiah, and now He was being born. For Mary, a young girl whom no one believed, who must have been scared out of her mind, this child was a symbol of hope. For the Shepard's on the hill, the dirty, filthy, lowly, and poor, this child was hope. And today, knowing that God came and was born simply to die, to give us life, is the greatest hope we could ever ever have.
This is what gets me. We try to separate the Holy Spirit from our physical lives. When it comes to sickness, relationships, all of our human needs for some reason we have trouble believing God wants to take part in solving our problems. But the truth is, He came to earth by his spirit impregnating a 15 year old girl! Cancer is nothing to him! Death is nothing! broken relationships are his specialty! We underestimate God so often we should be ashamed of ourselves!
The birth of Jesus was, in so many ways, a rebirth of hope. For the Israelites, they had waited hundreds of years for a Messiah, and now He was being born. For Mary, a young girl whom no one believed, who must have been scared out of her mind, this child was a symbol of hope. For the Shepard's on the hill, the dirty, filthy, lowly, and poor, this child was hope. And today, knowing that God came and was born simply to die, to give us life, is the greatest hope we could ever ever have.
