Good Mornin’!

FOCUS READING

Luke 1:26-28 (The Message)

In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and the virgin's name, Mary. Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her:

Good morning!
You're beautiful with God's beauty,
Beautiful inside and out!
God be with you.

DAILY BYTE

So, it struck me, as I read this passage for the first time from The Message version of the Bible that when the angel Gabriel visits Mary, he says to her, ‘Good morning! You’re beautiful with God’s beauty. Beautiful inside and out. God be with you.’

Can you imagine, how great it would be – every morning when we wake up with bags under our eyes and matted down hair to hear, Good morning! You are beautiful with God’s beauty! And in fact, the Greek real translation for good morning here, is “rejoice”! In other words – Yeah!! – Woohoo!! – I am beautiful!!! Good MORnin!

I would love to have that at my house! Picture the scene in the Bible….
Gabriel is talking to Mary – a teenager – and no offense to any teenagers who are reading this, but let’s be honest – our teenage years are probably some of our most image-obsessed years...!

In the ancient world, Mary probably never owned a mirror – the clearest reflections she saw of herself were probably in pools of water or shiny pieces of metal, which don’t give a very accurate portrayal.

She lived in a time when, frankly, peasant people lacked great hygiene, so even though Mary’s often portrayed in pictures as pristinely beautiful with perfect skin and symmetrical features – I’m not convinced that Mary really was all that pretty, at least by our standards. She was probably a pimply, greasy-haired teenager who wondered to herself when she stared in that pond – am I beautiful?

What do you think about and say to yourself when you wake up in the morning? Is your first thought that you are beautiful? What might it mean for you to be ‘beautiful with God’s beauty’?

Stay tuned this week to discover what it might have meant for Mary and what it still may mean for us.

(It is with heavy hearts that we, at Manning Road Methodist Church, announce that this week’s BDC will be our last. With both Anna and Roger moving on and Gareth’s work commitments unable to allow him to continue this service, the decision was taken to bring it to a close.

HOWEVER, all is not lost!

The daily messages of “Faith For Daily Living” are available on an internet site specifically designed for cellphones. If you are able to access the internet on your cellphone and would like to make use of this service, SMS "MOBI FFDL" to 33978 and a link will be sent directly to your phone that you can add to your bookmarks for daily use.

Alternatively, type http://faithfordailyliving.mobi into your phone’s internet browser and access the site directly.

There is no subscription fee for this service, although there is a once-off charge of R1.50 for the SMS and your cellphone provider will apply its usual rates for accessing the web.

For those who wish to receive it via email daily, go to http://faithfordailyliving.org/Apply.html and enter your email address in the relevant box.

Another excellent resource is the Upper Room Daily Devotional available for mobiles and email and can be sourced from http://devotional.upperroom.org/emaildevotional - follow the relevant instructions.

Thanking you all for sharing this journey with us…

Manning Road Methodist Church)