Angel: Believe the Impossible

“. . . an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’ ” (Matthew 1:20-21)

If the Christmas story was just fiction, we might call it lazy storytelling. It relies heavily on angels appearing to people at just the right moment to move the action along. Because we believe these to be actual events, it tells us instead how important these events must have been to God.

This time, the angel appears in a dream to a wounded husband-to-be. Very reasonably, he’s thinking about breaking things off with Mary after finding out she’s pregnant with some else’s baby. The angel asks him to believe in the impossible — that Mary is still a virgin and is miraculously pregnant with the Son of God.

His response: “When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him.” Again: The Christmas story depends on God’s people believing and acting on impossible things after receiving a message from God through an angel.

Think: You might not have heard it directly from an angel, but has God asked you to believe and act on anything that could be called impossible? Why do you believe?

Pray: Thank God for the faith shown by Mary and Joseph. Ask Him to help you to trust Him that deeply.

Do: Make a quick list of seemingly impossible things that you believe just because God told you they are true through His Word.

[More Christmas decoration angel pix from our readers below! If you'd like to grab a close-up shot (camera phone?) of an angel figure from around your house, we'll post some here in the blog between now and Christmas. E-mail your image to: pwangels@drop.io.]