Born Among Us-Week 4 // Love // Pastor Kate Murphy

Scripture: Luke 1:26-38

This Sunday we light the fourth Advent candle for love and turn to the story at the heart of this season.  I know everyone focuses on the babe in the manger, the shepherds, and angels and all the glorious details of the birth, but hidden in the quiet months of waiting before the birth there was a conversation that changed everything.  Scholars, artists, and poets call that moment the annunciation–the time an angel of the Lord appeared to an ordinary young girl and told her who she was in the eyes of the Lord and asked her to yield her life, her very flesh, to the Holy Spirit and bear the Christ child into the world.

Before there was the birth, there was a moment when God asked a question and waited for an answer and the story of salvation hinged on her reply.

This is a story we return to year after year, because it is not just Mary’s story.  Because the story of every believer includes an annunciation.  God comes to each of us–man, woman and child–to tell us who we are in the eyes of the Lord and to invite us to yield our whole selves to the power of the Holy Spirit so that we too can bear Christ into the world.  Jesus is still born among us when we say yes to the impossible invitation of incarnation.

I hope you will join me as we listen deeply to Mary’s annunciation in order to hear our own.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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