THURSDAY December 12, 2024

Overshadowed

Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.”
Luke 1:34-35

Mary, humble and meek, inquired of the angel as to how this miracle was going to take place. She questioned, knowing how babies are humanly conceived. She never doubted the message given to her by God through Gabriel. As a young woman, she was trying to understand how it would happen. The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, would come upon Mary, and she would be overshadowed by the power of God.

Mary would carry the Holy One, that precious Seed, within her womb. What was spoken by God long ago was coming to pass. Do you remember the prophecy given by God as a ray of hope after the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden? The Lord said to the serpent: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15). This spiritual battle would take place on the Cross where our Savior’s hands and feet would be nailed. In His triumph for the souls of mankind, Satan would be defeated.

The Holy One, the Son of God, was born to die––to die for us. In doing so, death no longer has power over us:

Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death (Hebrews 2:14 NLT).

From this Scripture, do you now understand the magnitude of what happened at the very moment of Jesus’ death? This is why we, as Christians, celebrate and worship the Savior at Christmas. We know He came to die for us.

For, first, the birth of Christ was the incarnation of God: it was God taking upon himself humanity—a mystery, a wondrous mystery, to be believed in rather than to be defined.
~C. H. Spurgeon~

For more from Raul Ries, please visit SomebodyLovesYou.com!