Tag Archives: Annunciation

The Angel Visits Mary

Posted on by

This isn’t traditionally the time of year the church celebrates the Annunciation (the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she was going to conceive Jesus), but since we’re in full “expecting a baby” mode, and a few weeks seem like at least nine months when you’re only three years old, it seemed like a good time for a Bible lesson on getting ready for Baby Jesus.  I figure we talk about waiting for Jesus, spend some time on Thanksgiving, and then voila!  Arianna arrives and we can soak in the joy of the Christmas season.  I’m not playing Christmas carols yet, but boy I’m looking forward to it!

I introduced the story to Ian with the flannel board set as I read Luke 1:26-38 from my Bible.  It definitely triggered a memory with him, but it still seemed new enough to be exciting.  He was so curious about the story, I decided to show him the clip from The Nativity Story where Gabriel comes to Mary.  He wanted to watch more, so we jumped to the end when Jesus was born and the shepherds and wise men arrived.  Ian was so excited by the whole scene.  He kept saying, “He’s so cute!  I wish we could go and see Him!”  I think his excitement was more about the tiny baby than the fact that it was Jesus, so I said, “Well, God’s sending us Arianna soon, so we’ll get to hold her instead.”  He wanted to make sure we had a blanket to wrap her in like the one Joseph and Mary wrapped around Jesus in the film.  There are plenty of scenes in the movie that Ian’s not ready to see, so we won’t be watching the whole thing this year, but just seeing those two scenes was very powerful and seemed to really affect him.

I was surprised to find that two of our storybook Bibles didn’t contain any mention of the angel coming to Mary.  We read it in The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley), and of course Ian didn’t want to stop there.  I was trying to save the birth of Jesus and the shepherd’s visit for December, but I decided not to fight him on it.  After all, with a newborn in the house, who knows how often I’ll get to sit down with him and talk about it!  We also read the story in Classic Bible Stories: A Family Treasury, which was accompanied by a beautiful illustration (my favorite thing about this book).

Our Bible verse is Luke 1:37 “For nothing is impossible with God.” (This had been the Bible verse assigned to the lesson on Daniel in ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 17, but I’d gone with a different one.  Since it actually comes from this story, it seemed like good time to use it!).  As suggested in ABCJLM, we sang it to the tune of “London Bridge”:

For nothing is impossible with God, impossible with God, impossible with God.  For nothing is impossible with God. Luke 1:37

I was kind of surprised I couldn’t find any songs in my library that went with the memory verse to include in our iPod playlist for the week.  Here’s what we did listen to (short list this week!):

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool