Luke 1:26-28
"In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, 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. The angel went to her and said, 'Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you.'"
Nazareth. Let me be honest about Nazareth. It was not a place of significance. It was not Jerusalem with its temple. It was not Rome with its power. It was a dusty little town in a region that the religious elite looked down on. Nathanael would later say, "Can anything good come from Nazareth." That was the reputation. Nowhere. Nothing. Nobody.
And God sends His most important messenger to a teenage girl in that nowhere town. Not to a king. Not to a high priest. Not to a scholar in a library. To a girl whose name would have meant nothing to anyone outside her village. Mary. Young. Poor. Female. In a culture where women had limited rights and limited voice. This is the person God chooses to carry the Savior of the world.
If you want to understand the heart of God, look at who He chooses. He does not start with the powerful. He starts with the overlooked. He does not build His kingdom from the top down. He builds it from the bottom up. Mary was not chosen because she was impressive. She was chosen because she was available. Her greatness was not in her status. It was in her surrender. "I am the Lord's servant," she would say. And those words changed the course of history more than any empire ever did.
I think about this because I spend so much of my life feeling unqualified. Too broken. Too ordinary. Too far from the person I think I should be to be useful to God. And then I read this story and I realize that God's favorite starting place is not the mountaintop. It is the margins. He finds the person everyone else has passed by and He says, "You. I need you for this."
Mary did not have a platform. She did not have a following. She did not have wealth or influence or a degree. She had a willing heart. And that was enough for God. It is still enough for God. He does not need your resume. He needs your yes. He does not need your perfection. He needs your availability. The same God who chose a nobody girl from a nowhere town is looking at you right now and saying the same thing He said to her. The Lord is with you.
"Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you."
Let those words land. Highly favored. Not because of what Mary had done. Because of who God is. The favor of God is not earned. It is given. And if it was given to a teenage girl in Nazareth, it is given to you wherever you are. In your kitchen. In your car. In your hospital room. In your loneliness. The Lord is with you. He has chosen you. Not in spite of your ordinary life. Through it.
With the fifth candle glowing and the memory of a young woman's courage warming my chest, I am reminded that God sees the unseen. He always has. Claire