A hello from the pregnant Mary, the mother of Jesus, to the even further along Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, brought unexpected results.

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

Elizabeth immediately recognized that the baby Mary carried was the Messiah, the Savior of all the world, and indeed her Lord. More remarkably, the baby Elizabeth bore leapt at the presence of the pre-born Jesus (countering the view that the wombs of pregnant women contain only lumps of senseless tissue).

Divine sparks crackled. The bellies of two unknown women, in a backwater town on the overlooked edge of an empire, thrummed with promise. The physical presence of the Son of God entered the world, and even in the womb others took notice.

Luke 1 in Through the Bible in 2024

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