MARY’S CLOSE ENCOUNTER
Luke 1:26-38 (NLT)
Can any of us begin to imagine how Mary must have felt when she had her close encounter with Angel Gabriel? Mary is a young woman, probably in her early teens, getting ready to marry Joseph and is just going about her daily business. Suddenly there is an angel in front of her, telling her she is highly favoured by God. The Scripture says Mary is ‘greatly troubled’ by the situation, but that is probably a bit of an understatement - after all, this Gospel is written by a man!
Yet, in her fear, Mary is still able to listen to the heavenly messenger and even asks, ‘How this will be?’ If it were any of us, we’d probably have been struck dumb at this close encounter and struggled to have found any words at all. Our question would probably have been, ‘Are you sure you have got the right woman?’ But the Angel answers Mary by reassuring her of God’s plan recorded in the Scriptures which she would have known all her life, and reminds her that nothing is impossible to God. And Mary’s response is simply to say, ‘Let it be.’ Or as the New Living Translation puts it,
‘I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.’
JOSEPH’S CLOSE ENCOUNTER
Matthew 1:18-24 (NIV)
Our imaginations may lead us to wonder about the parts of this story that do not get a biblical record – for example the conversation when Mary informs her parents of that close encounter with Gabriel. Or the one where she tries to tell Joseph too. They might have been a most interesting read! Instead, what we get is the record of Joseph’s close encounter with an angel of the Lord, not in a physical appearance like Mary but rather in a dream.
Dreams can be strange, can’t they? Sometimes our unconscious mind throws up all sorts of muddled images as we sleep, and we wake wondering what on earth happened. Do you think that might be how it felt for Joseph too? Scripture tells us that he was a man of integrity who did not want to disgrace Mary publicly, so he must have gone to bed with a heavy heart and a head full of questions as to what to do for the best.
His close encounter, through a dream, gives Joseph his answer and he is reassured that what has happened is of God. He too is reminded of Scripture about the promised Messiah that he will have known about since he was a boy.
‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means “God with us”).’
Like Mary, Joseph did not hesitate to respond positively to this close encounter and we know that he did exactly what was asked of him.
THE SHEPHERDS’ CLOSE ENCOUNTER
Luke 2:8-20
We are told that the shepherds were keeping watch that night, and while they may have been expecting a close confrontation with a wild animal, it’s unlikely to have ever crossed their minds that they would experience a close encounter with the angel of the Lord and his heavenly host!
Can you imagine their faces as the sky filled with God’s messengers? Words like terrified, sorely afraid, frightened, with great fear, terror-stricken have all been used to describe how they felt about this close encounter. But again, they also were reassured, told not to be afraid, but rather to listen to the most amazing news that was to be shared with them - the news that the Saviour of the world had been born in their town and that they should go and see for themselves.
What would have happened if they had decided not to go? If they had decided they couldn’t leave the sheep or were just too frightened to respond to the message they had heard? However, we know that the Scripture tells us that they didn’t just ‘go’ – they hurried, with haste, quickly! In fact they ‘went running’, ‘as fast as they could’, so excited were they to find the Christ-child the angels had told them about. And once they had seen him, they returned to the fields praising God for all they had seen and heard – and no doubt sharing the news of this close encounter that had been theirs.
CONCLUSION
Close encounters this Christmas
So, there in that story we know so well, we have seen three close encounters of the Christmas kind. But did you notice that there was a pattern in them? Each time the encounter caused the recipients to be afraid, to be troubled, to be concerned. But every time they were reassured and told not to be afraid because this was all God’s plan. And in response, each of them did exactly what they were asked, even though they certainly didn’t fully understand the whole story of what was happening.
Sometimes when we encounter difficult times in our lives, we feel afraid, unsure and troubled. Yet God tells us in his word not to be afraid, 366 times – one for each day of the year and a spare for a leap year! God wants us to trust in his plan and purpose for our lives, even when we cannot understand the way, and to follow his leading by reaching out in faith.
So, this Christmas, may each of us take time to seek a ‘close encounter of the Christmas kind’ by making space in the busyness of it all to spend time alone with God and to seek afresh his will and purpose for us. We can be confident that whatever that may be, we do not need to be afraid because there is always help from Heaven available to us.
REFLECTION
Play the video ‘Help from Heaven’ by Matt Redman
