If there’s a time of year to grasp the significance of this number, it’s now. Because the birth of Jesus casts light on the dark meaning of 666. And, most importantly, the birth of God’s Son is the death of that number’s power over us.
As we enter into this year’s Advent season, this blog is a part of our series on the hope we find in, through and given by Christ, Each week’s installment will look at hope from a different perspective with special emphasis on corresponding passages of Scripture.
No one twisted Jesus’s arm to make him enter Mary’s womb. No one tricked him into being born into a world strung out on the meth of sin. He came in with his eyes wide open.
He created us with an eye on recreating us. He made humanity in his image because one day he would assume that image. The Creator would become a creature while remaining Creator.
If April 1 is April Fools’ Day, then March 25 is Divine Fool’s Day. Falling nine months before Christmas, it’s the day when God set in motion what appeared to be a foolish plan.
The mother of this prophet is visited by the Mother of God. In the coming together of these two pregnant women, we see the coming together of the old and the new.
Although I believe my Catholic friends say more of Mary than can be biblically justified, I also believe that many of my Protestant friends say less of Mary than the Bible demands.
It all started when out of the nothingness of Mary’s womb, the Word who makes all things, made for Himself a body, human through and through. From the virgin soil of Eden the first man came and from the virgin womb the last man came—came to re-genesis you.
When the angel told Mary she had become a mother, she replied simply, ''Let it be to me according to your word.'' Therein is a grateful acknowledgment that the Creator had formed life in her womb.