I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 1

I love Luke’s introduction and what it tells us about what he is going to do.  Luke focused on writing what he believed (and I believe) to be a factual account of Jesus’ life.  It was more important to him that what he wrote be an accurate account of what happened than that it supported a particular belief system.  This does not mean that Luke’s belief system did not influence what he chose to record.  But it does indicate that Luke attempted to base his beliefs on the facts as he observed them.  I also believe that Luke was telling Theophilus, “of course there are not accounts about Jesus from nonbelievers.  If you saw this stuff happening and realized that it was important, you would end up as a believer.”

I find it interesting to compare and contrast the ways in which Zechariah and Mary reacted to the message they each received from the angel.  Neither one quite believed that what the angel told them would happen.  Yet Zechariah received a reprimand for not believing while Mary received an explanation.  Of course, that goes right along with how they expressed their lack of belief.  Zechariah asked for evidence that what the angel was telling him would happen.  Mary asked for an explanation, after essentially saying, “I know how this works, and that doesn’t apply here.”  Since Zechariah asked for a sign, he received a sign, a somewhat punitive sign, but a sign nonetheless.  Mary asked for an explanation, so that was what she got.  I want to point out that I believe that Luke included Mary’s comment about being a virgin to indicate that she was not a naive young woman who did not know how pregnancy happened.