Luke 1:26-38 This part of the Christmas story is so well-known to us that it ought to bear little further commentary. Mary's fitness for the role because of her lineage and Godly life-style; her likely young age; her wonder at how God could cause a virgin to become pregnant; her willingness to accept the shame and public humiliation that would certainly come with unwed pregnancy in order to follow God's will; &c, She was not even rebuked as Sarah was - perhaps because this was truly impossible in natural terms - for a virgin to bear a child.

            Why was it necessary for Jesus to be born of a virgin? Matthew 1:12 records the lineage passing through Jeconiah at the time of the deportation to Babylon, which invokes the curse God spoke through Jeremiah (22:29-30). This curse precluded Joseph from ever reigning over Israel, and would have also prevented Jesus from ruling for Israel, if He had been of the offspring of Joseph and thus Jeconiah. But God side-stepped this curse since Jesus was born of a virgin.

            This has always raised in my mind a question about the uncharted descendants of any given person in antiquity. The Scriptures record the lineage of the lines that matter. But suppose that Jeconiah had two children who survived to adulthood, and that there were twelve such generations from Jeconiah to Joseph. That would have resulted in 4,096 offspring of Jeconiah in Joseph's generation. If each generation had had three children surviving to adulthood, that could have resulted in over 530,000 descendants. Of course, in the context of that day, many children died before ever living long enough to have any children. The total population of Israel was probably fairly constant, and there would have been some intermarriage of distant cousins, to some extent reducing the total dispersion to a smaller number. Nevertheless, we must take it on faith that Mary's lineage, going back twelve generations, did not include Jeconiah, or else the promise of Jesus' reign over Israel (Luke 1:32-33) would have been precluded. Mary would have had 2048 great to the tenth grandfathers in Jeconiah's generation. None of them could have been Jeconiah.

            Luke 1:35 again emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit as the active agent in God's activity among humans. The Holy Spirit would come upon Mary and (evidently) thru Him, the power of God would overshadow her, as the angelic answer to Mary's very natural question, 'How can this be?' How can any miraculous work of God occur? God is perhaps not limited - the Father Himself could act directly, or Jesus the Son could speak the words. But in dealing with human frailty, it is the grace of God that the Holy Spirit - fully God but also divinely gentle, like a dove - acts in the tenderest of human interactions - conception.

            Mary's response (Luke 1:38) - behold the 'doulos' of The Lord - points back to the Mosaic provision for a love-slave (Exodus 21:2-6). If the master gives his slave a wife and she bears a child, at the end of seven years the slave goes free but the wife & children belong to the master. But he can choose to remain with that master forever out of love for master and wife and children. At Mary's tender age (not really sure how young, but probably a teenager,or maybe early twenties), she nonetheless had seen enough of The Lord to choose that life. Permanent servitude to The Lord. How many of us as teenagers had seen enough of God - walking with Him, serving Him, seeing His intrinsic nature and character - that we were willing to make a permanent commitment? Different events are used to mark the transition to adult faith. Some have confirmation, which includes a young person's commitment to the basic doctrines of the church. Some baptize young people (or people of any age) when they make a decision to become a Christian. Aside from the decision to enter the ministry full-time, what means is there for a teenager to say publicly that they have decided to become a love-slave of Jesus? More importantly, what experiences with The Lord would a teenager have to have in order to make such a commitment? How can we as parents (or grandparents) facilitate such experiences?