One thing that always gets my kids giggling is a book written by my husband when he was a boy.  “Mrs. White’s Zoo,” as it is titled, contains some delightfully silly and impossible combinations of adjectives and animals that only exist in the imagination of a child. They laugh at his childish illustrations and descriptions, such as a purple lion or a gray raccoon (that is actually brown). To our logical minds, such combinations sound absurd because we’ve never seen them and know them to be impossible.  

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God gave children wonderful creativity, which some of us tend to lose as adults. We get wrapped up in normal and cannot conceive of anything that isn’t common or regular in some way; so, we often become skeptical of the miraculous. One of the many things I love about God is His creativity. He will often use the unlikely, the crazy, or the wild to accomplish His purposes. One of the many examples we have of this is the virgin birth. Those two words are oxymoronic because they shouldn’t go together in our educated brains. I remember, as a child, not knowing what “virgin” meant, and accepted it as some miraculous thing that God did, but the miraculous aspect of it was lost on me. I had no trouble believing it since I grew up hearing it, but when I came of the age to understand what that meant, God got bigger to me. It was clear to me that he had used not just the unlikely but the impossible to be the vessel for Jesus to come to us.  

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I have often pondered why this was a sign God used. Wouldn’t anyone Mary encountered just think she was a liar? I cannot imagine anyone devoting too much brainpower to believe a crazy girl who claims she’d never been with a man; yet, her growing baby bump would suggest otherwise. Joseph, no doubt, validated her to some degree, since he chose to marry her, but even Mary and Joseph’s testimony together still seems like a hard sign to prove. But what if the virgin birth wasn’t mainly for us, in the 21^st century? Maybe it wasn’t even for those who would judge Mary and Joseph harshly. What if it was for that teenage girl whose life was upended when she was visited by an angel, and she knew the truth? What if it was for her righteous and upright fiancé who knew the child was not his and trusted the explanation after his encounter with an angel? Ancient texts, such as Isaiah, likely came to the minds of these devout Jews, confirming in their hearts that they were, indeed, to raise Immanuel. God used a miraculous and impossible sign to personally show Himself to the very vessels He would use to accomplish His purpose.  

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While this sign would have been most powerful to Mary and Joseph themselves, it also has great potency to others, as well. The wild, crazy, impossible type of events catch our attention in wonder; so, it is hard for our modern brains to imagine how so many, at the time, missed the signs. We have the advantage of the complete, compiled Scriptures, which are rich with the miraculous and impossible, but between the miraculous is a whole lot of mundane. If those in the first century got wrapped up in the normal, as we often do, it’s likely they too may ignore or dismiss the miraculous. Only those actively watching and waiting for the Messiah were ready.  

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Those who did not miss Jesus coming were actively seeking him. Mary and Joseph obviously had first-hand information that the time had come for the Savior to be born. The shepherds would have literally had to ignore a sign from Heaven to miss him.  The wise men likely traveled close to two years to find him. We must find a balance between living in the “normal” but accepting and standing in awe of the impossible. Let us not get so used to the miraculous and impossible recorded in Scripture that we yawn at the Christmas story and miss how big God is, and what He is communicating to us…His love. Like the silly little book my husband wrote which brings so much joy to my children decades later, God wrote of our coming joy in His ancient words which are fulfilled in Jesus: Immanuel, who is God with us.  

Has God set something before you that seems wild and crazy? What is your purple lion that just seems impossible? Are you actively seeking Jesus? We know those who seek Jesus will find him and usually have a story to tell. As the signs of Jesus’ arrival prove, “nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). May our hearts respond as Mary’s did when faced with the impossible, “...I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Amen.