Mary's Piety
Horace Bushnell, D. D. Luke 1:26-30 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,… The Angel does not say, observe, that the favour of God has found her, but that she has found favour with Him, The expression, it is true, may be used in either way, to indicate what God has undertaken to do for her, or what she has obtained by the suit of her gentle, sweet-minded prayers. It is most naturally taken in this latter way; giving us to see how she has been waiting before Him, from her tender girlhood onward, asking of Him grace for a good life, and questioning His oracle as to what she is to do, or to be. She has read the prophets too, as we may judge, and her feeling, like all the religious feeling of her nation, is leavened in this manner, by infinite yearnings for the coming of that wonderful unknown Being called Messiah. And so her opening womanly nature has been stretching itself Messiahward, and configuring itself inwardly to what the unknown Great One is to be. Sighing after Him thus, in the sweet longings of her prayers, she is winning such favour, and becoming inwardly akin to Him in such degree, as elects her to bear the promised Child of the skies, and be set in a properly Divine motherhood before the worlds! Ah, yes, Mary, canst thou believe it? That which the prophets of so many ages drew you into praying for; that which angels in God's highest and most ancient realms have been peering from above to look into, that for which the fulness of time has now come — that special thing of God's counsel, supereminent favour, His greatest miracle, His unmatched wonder, His one thing absolute, which lets nothing ever come to pass that can be put into class with it-even that thou hast gotten a call from God to mediate for tim world, bearing it as thy Holy Thing, the fruit of thy sweet and maidenly prayers. (Horace Bushnell, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, WEB: Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,