The Possibility in the Impossible

“For nothing is impossible with God.”
Luke 1:37

The season of Advent is upon us once again. It is a season of celebration and anticipation. The story of it to quote the famous philosopher Walt Disney is a “tale as old as time” well actually it is a tale much older than time really. As much as I love the scriptures from both the old and new testaments concerning the advent of Messiah, I must admit it can be hard to find a fresh perspective on it when it comes to writing something that will encourage me and anyone who may be reading this at the place they are this moment.

As listened to the first Sunday of Advent message at church, hearing once again Luke narrative of the angel Gabriel’s conversation with Mary, I was struck by how many stories of the possibility in the impossible there are in Scripture, so many in fact that it is possible to see how people who don’t believe in God could see the book as a fairy tale.

Right from the beginning we see the possibility in the impossible as the Spirit asks to believe that this world and everything in it was either spoken into existence or handmade by God himself.

What about the son of a farmer overcoming great adversity to be second only to Pharaoh in Egypt?

How about Moses – alone it would have been impossible for a stuttering, sheep herding, murderer to lead a nation full of people out of bondage and on a forty year journey through the wilderness? What about the fact that during that journey – their clothes never wore out and they always had food to eat and water to drink? How impossible is it for a young shepherd to kill a giant and become king? There are plenty more in the Old Testament, but let’s jump head to this amazing conversation between Gabriel and Mary. Mary by all accounts was probably just an ordinary girl, it’s not likely that she was the only girl in Nazareth who was still a virgin, though it could be possible that she was the only girl in town to be engaged to a descendant of David. It could also be that she was also the only girl in town that could find a connection to the line of David in her own family tree. So that made her stand out perhaps from the rest of the girls her age. We know from how Gabriel talks to her that she must have been a really good girl to have been noticed and favored by God for this seemingly impossible task. But wait, what is the possibility that a really good girl would agree to becoming pregnant out of wedlock, of looking as though she had betrayed her betrothed – in our thinking a good girl, even if being addressed by an Angel of the Lord she loved would likely have said know. Look at her cousin’s husband Zechariah – he talked to an angel too and didn’t believe him and so had to watch the impossible happen in silence.

Mary had the courage to say yes to the Lord, to be the revolutionary, risk taker needed to bring the Messiah into the world, because she had faith in her God and she believed in the possibility in the impossible.

In this season of celebration and anticipation, this season for some of sorrow and hopelessness let us look for the possibility in the impossible. No matter what this season looks like for you – look to Jesus, stand firmly, believing He has amazing things in store for you, believing that with God no thing is impossible and that there is plenty of possibility in the things you see as impossible right now.

A Prayer
Father – thank you for the stories of possibility in the impossible in Your Word. Thank you for the examples of people who walked in faith with You and accomplished such amazing things. Thank you that Mary walked in faith so that Your Son’s impossible journey to humanity could take place, give us the same power of the possibilities found in the impossible. Help us in this season that carries so much good and so much difficulty to be a light shining in the darkness declaring that with Jesus there is possibility in the impossible. In the name of Jesus, we pray – Amen.