Maybe you've heard it said that "Advent makes innkeepers of us all," meaning we all come face to face with the spiritual task of heeding the exhortation of Isaac Watts, in Joy to the World: "Let every heart prepare Him room." As I was preparing a message for this year's Advent season, a thought struck me: Advent makes virgins out of us all!
Is it unreasonable to think that the story of the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary was designed not only to help us remember the miraculous way in which our Lord was brought into the world, but a challenge to look at this narrative as a template of what the Spirit of God wants to accomplish in each one of us?
Look afresh at the explanation of how Gabriel proposes Mary is to become the recipient of the Divine Fetus: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you. Even though it's Gabriel who's going to the trouble to explain the 'how', nevertheless it's easy to see that this is not exactly the most medically/technically precise language for describing the process of Divine insemination. In fact the language of the how makes it so generic, that it seems as though it could be applied to almost any situation. In fact it could simply be used to describe the Spirit-filled life.
Mary's response assent is beautiful: "Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word." Paul say, in Romans 10:17 that "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Interestingly, ancient scholars on this subject identify the organ of conception of the Son of God, not the uterus, but the ear.
That being the case, it's not too far fetched to imagine that the Spirit of the Lord desires to overshadow us and come upon us in such a way so as to bring something of His divine purpose into the world through us. We are all virgins.
And as an added observation. A common saying to pregnant women is that they are 'eating for two'. In Mary's case she wasn't merely eating for two; she was eating for the whole world. In the same way, whatever God is birthing in us is bigger than us.
