Editor’s Note: The following piece is part of the Holy Week Series from our Young Writers cohort. To begin the series, Christine Song reflects upon Luke 1:26-45 and the birth of Christ.
I am thankful that God’s perfect plan to save His people starts in the womb of a lowly virgin. I am thankful that in God’s upside down economy, expectations are completely flipped as He carries out His will in ways unimaginable. Christ’s entry into this world is far from grand, flashy, and extravagant. God does not choose neither fame nor status, but He looks and finds favor with society’s lowest and most powerless, a woman, to begin His most powerful work. God’s work through Mary affirms the angel’s response (Luke 1:37), “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
If I were to sit down and name all the impossible things in my life that God has made possible, the list would run on for pages. The one thing that sticks out as most crucial, for which I will remain eternally grateful, is my salvation. How far had I fallen away, and how deep a hurt had I left in the Father’s heart. Reconciliation seemed impossible. Still, how much more impossible is His strength that reached across that great chasm to pull me out. How much more impossible is His grace that came to me in the form of His own Son.
Ultimately, it is such a recognition that humbles me, causing my lips to echo Mary’s confession (Luke 1:38), “I am the servant of the Lord.” This Passion Week, my prayer is for God to humble me and fix my gaze ahead to Jesus, who Himself became a humble servant by taking on human form (Philippians 2:7). The paradoxical lowly birth of the Son of the Most High (Luke 1:32) is the foundation on which rests my relationship with God. Deeply considering this wonderful revelation produces only one response within me: lips bringing shouts of praises and a soul bent to magnify the Lord.