I wonder how many angels have come into my life and I've been oblivious to their appearance. Or how often I've vaguely been aware of an unexpected presence but was scared by the message and so like Mary at the beginning of the story, I thought 'how can this be?' and then unlike Mary, I discounted my experience.
The Gospel of Luke tells the story this way: the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary saying, "hail favored one, the Lord is with you." The story then recounts, "she was troubled at this statement and kept pondering what this might be." Despite the disruption to her quiet moment of prayer by an angel, Mary kept pondering - she stayed with the experience by considering; thinking reflectively and in this way, became hospitable to a completely unexpected - and slightly scary - experience.
Being hospitable to interruptions of my expectations of what is proper and acceptable to who I am and how I live from that knowledge, is not easy. I don't know about you but I get a lot of security and comfort from my routines of living, both the external routines: my daily habits moving me through my day as well as my internal routines of thoughts and expectations: what I believe and therefore how I expect myself and life to behave. Major disruptions to either my habits of behaving or my habits of thinking tend to make me cranky.
Crankiness is not a hospitable attitude. Crankiness makes it really difficult to see angels and even more difficult to hear with one's heart the message of the angel. Becoming aware of my own crankiness at even wonderful disruptions to my preconceived ideas of how life should operate is why today I wonder: how many angels have I missed welcoming to my life?
How often have I brushed away the gift God offered me by a cranky attitude of 'how can this be?' Not Mary's wondering and reflective 'how can this be?" No, I confess to being aware that more than once in my life I've been Zechariah and like him, responded to God's unexpected blessing with "oh, that is ridiculous! What kind of fool do you think I am to believe you are offering new life to me? Harumph! Go away!"
The story of Jesus coming into the world as Emmanuel - God with us - is a story of unfathomable love: the greatest blessing given to earth and we human earthlings. Love however by very nature expands life and expansion is disruptive: it breaks into what was and moves the pieces around and out of place.
Every persons life in the Nativity narrative was seriously disrupted and turned upside down, not by disaster and not by tragedy but by love so unexpected and profound that their life changed completely.
We who hear this story AGAIN this season know the entire plot and ending and so we tend to discount the disruption of life the people who lived it experienced as they said 'yes' and began a story where 'God has found favor' with them - personally - and therefore gave each person new life.
Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Zechariah and all the others of this story did not know how the story of their yes would unfold. And neither do you or I know how a yes to God's unexpected blessing will unfold. All we can do is as they did: say yes and trust the truth of the closing words of Angel Gabriel, "nothing will be impossible with God."
As you light your candle today you may consider saying: "yes, I am open to angels bringing unexpected blessing and love to my life."
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