An Introduction
“Mary and Eve” by Sr. Grace Remington, reprinted with permission.
Advent is a season of waiting. Waiting for what?! For the arrival of Christ. Not only his arrival as a baby over two thousand years ago, but also (and perhaps more importantly) his arrival that will come soon as the King of Glory to usher in the new heavens and new earth. A place where God will dwell with his people and we will see him face to face. God will make all things new and we will finally have rest and peace and where we will experience unbridled joy and hope fulfilled. Christ’s people, the Church, is made up of anyone who trusts in Jesus as their Lord and Savior and live a life in humble reliance upon his transformative grace and powerful mercy. There are no other requirements for admittance into the people of God. In fact, the people whom God calls into his family is surprising! After all, he called the tax collectors, the sinners, the sick and the lame, as well as those who were blinded for a time by their own self-righteous works.
The wonderful thing about God’s grace is that it seeks us out where we are and wraps us up into God’s grand story to take us places where we never dared to dream. In God’s wisdom, he also chose to use people throughout history to bring about the incarnation and birth of Jesus, the eternal Son of God. Our Advent devotional series this year is focusing on the theme “The Mothers of Christ”, by which we mean those women that are included in Jesus’ family tree. We can see this family tree in Matthew 1.
There are many names in this genealogy of Jesus, but we will focus on just a few “mothers” to highlight God’s wonderful grace to all. These “mothers” of Christ are: Eve; Rahab; Ruth; Bathsheba; and Mary, the actual birth mother of Jesus. You may know a little or a lot about these women, but it is our hope that through this devotional you will be able to celebrate along with us the mercies of God and see with new eyes how his grace seeks and finds imperfect people to accomplish his amazing purposes. Each of these women had a longing in their hearts for restoration, and they nurtured the hope of a Savior yet to come and make all things new. So read along with us and discover this hope of Christ’s coming.