Christmas and Pentecost — More Connected Than You Think

At first glance, the story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth seems out of place outside of Advent. After all, Advent is about the coming of Jesus. Pentecost is about the coming of the Holy Spirit. What could these two seasons possibly share?

Everything. Listen to what happened when Mary arrived at Elizabeth’s door:

“At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” — Luke 1:39–41

Did you catch that? Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit — right in the middle of the Christmas story. Christmas meets Pentecost.

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Elizabeth: The Unsung Hero of the Nativity

Of all the characters in the nativity story, Elizabeth may be the most underrated. We don’t know whether she was Mary’s aunt or cousin, but we know this: she made a profound difference in a young woman’s life at the moment she needed it most.

Mary was a teenager — pregnant, unmarried, and living in a culture where that combination carried shame, social rejection, and even the threat of death. She arrived at Elizabeth’s door carrying what we might imagine as a tattered suitcase filled with pain, guilt, and fear.

But Elizabeth saw through all of it.

Where others saw disgrace, Elizabeth saw God at work. And she said so:

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!”

To the world, Mary might have been a moral failure. Society has a cruel word for children born outside of marriage. But Elizabeth chose a different word entirely: blessed. Blessed is Mary. Blessed is the child.

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The Spiritual Gift of Seeing God in Broken Places

Do you know that discerning God at work in others is a genuine gift of the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit has a remarkable ability to locate grace within even the darkest, most broken corners of human life. Elizabeth had that gift. She looked past Mary’s circumstances and identified the holy at work within her.

Wouldn’t you like to be an Elizabeth to someone?

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Three Practices for Embracing the Holy

If you want to live as a Spirit-filled person who helps others see God’s grace in their lives, here are three things you must embrace:

1. Decide What You Truly Believe About Grace

You have to come down on one side of a fundamental question:

Is human sinfulness greater than God’s redeeming grace — or is God’s redeeming grace greater than human sinfulness?

It’s not an easy choice. Our natural tendency is to be skeptical that God’s love can actually change a life.

Consider the true story of a seminary student named Sam. In his younger years, Sam described himself as “the teenager from hell.” He made his parents miserable, flunked out of college, and scraped by working fast food. He married a woman his parents disapproved of. Life looked like one long string of failures.

But then something unexpected happened. Sam and his wife started attending a small church. Gradually, he came to the startling realization that God loved him and had a purpose for his life. He accepted Christ — and then felt a clear calling to become a pastor. Then Sam went back to school, finished his degree, and prepared for seminary, all without telling his parents, certain they would only laugh.

When the day came to share his news, Sam braced himself. His mother burst into tears.

“Oh Sam, I am so ashamed! I can’t believe this has happened!”

Confused, Sam asked what she meant.

Through her sobs, she told him a story he’d never heard. Before he was born, she had suffered several miscarriages. The doctors said she’d never carry a child to term. In desperation, she made a promise to God: if He gave her a son, she would name him Samuel — just like Hannah in the Old Testament — and dedicate him to God’s service.

Sam was stunned. “Mom, why didn’t you ever tell me? You could have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

His mother paused, then said:

“Sam, think about it. We’re METHODISTS! I didn’t know if we even believed in this kind of thing. How was I to know it would actually work?”

Now that there is funny! Sort of.

It’s not just Methodists who struggle with this. All of us find it hard to believe that God’s grace is truly more powerful than human failure. But embracing the holy starts there — with the conviction that God’s redeeming grace is the most powerful force in the world, and grace is at work somewhere in every human story.

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2. Identify the Presence of God in Other People’s Lives

On April 7, 1972, a twin-engine Piper Aztec flown by Jungle Aviation and Radio Service — the aviation arm of Wycliffe Bible Translators — lost an engine, caught fire, and crashed in New Guinea. All seven people on board were killed.

The chief aircraft mechanic was devastated. Just the day before, that plane had rolled out of the maintenance hangar after a 100-hour inspection. Replaying the work in his mind, he remembered with horror that he had been interrupted while tightening a fuel line — and had never gone back to finish. That loose connection had allowed raw fuel to spray onto the engine, causing the fire and therefore the crash, killing seven of his dear friends.

The weight of that knowledge nearly destroyed him. For days he wandered in a stupor, unable to speak, unreachable by those who tried to help.

Then the pilot’s widow came in from the field to collect her husband’s belongings before the long journey back to New Zealand. The mechanic knew he had to face her. When they finally met, emotion nearly silenced him. He held up his trembling right hand and managed to say:

“This is the hand that took your husband’s life.”

A long silence followed.

And then this woman did something remarkable. She reached out and took his trembling hand in hers, held it gently until it stopped shaking. Then, in an act of extraordinary grace, she brought that hand to her cheek and held it there tenderly.

Then she whispered: “But this is also the hand that helps bring Christ’s love to thousands.”

That was the first step in a long journey of healing — because one remarkable woman looked past the failure of a mechanic’s hand and named the holiness at work within it.

Are there people in your life who are so consumed by their own mistakes, guilt, and brokenness that they have long since stopped believing God could be at work in them? They need what Elizabeth gave Mary. They need what that widow gave that mechanic – someone who practices the art of embracing the holy — and who can gently help them see it for themselves.

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3. Believe in Both Christmas and Pentecost

Christmas proclaims that God’s dwelling place has moved. No longer “up there” among the heavens — but down here, among us. Not in the sterile sanctity of sacred spaces, but in the sin-stained streets, the broken homes, the crushed lives, and the frightened hearts of pregnant teenagers.

Pentecost proclaims that the Holy Spirit has been breathed into you.

Like Elizabeth, you are filled with the Holy Spirit. And like Elizabeth, you and I are called to go into the world and embrace the holy in every unlikely, broken, beautiful person we meet.

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Conclusion: Go Be an Elizabeth

Grace is not naive. It does not ignore brokenness. But grace refuses to let brokenness have the final word.

Mary arrived at Elizabeth’s door as a social outcast. She left singing the Magnificat — one of the most triumphant songs in all of Scripture. That transformation didn’t happen in a temple. It happened because one ordinary, Spirit-filled woman looked at a broken girl and said: You are blessed. And so is what God is doing inside you.

The Holy Spirit has given you that same gift. Yes, YOU!

So go. Find your Mary. And tell her she is blessed.