“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
A question asked by teachers and adults to preschoolers and elementary kids. It’s so interesting to hear the answers: fireman, football player, teacher, nurse, singer, actress. Kids get excited when they see the cool things that people who have these jobs or titles get to do and they want to do that when they grow up.
I always thought it would be fun to work in a flower shop where you could deliver flowers to people and make them smile. I also thought it would be really cool to be the person who worked at Publisher’s Clearing House and got to deliver balloons and a gigantic cardboard check to the winner of “millions of dollars for life.”
Can you imagine how cool of a job Gabriel, the angel, had? He got to tell the Virgin Mary that she was pregnant with Jesus, the Savior of the world, the one who had been prophesied about!! But we sometimes overlook another important birth that was foretold and seemed impossible to the parents… John the Baptist. John’s birth was also very important because he would lead the way for Jesus.. he would tell others about Him and encourage people to believe in Him. John got to baptize Jesus! What a cool job!
In Luke 1:5-25 we read where the angel, Gabriel, got to tell Zechariah (the father of John the Baptist) that he was going to be a father even though he and his wife, Elizabeth, were what we would consider too old to have children. Zechariah even questioned Gabriel as to how this could happen because he and Elizabeth were “an old man and [my] wife was well along in years”.
But Gabriel said in verse 19: “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and tell you this good news.” We know in Luke 2 that Gabriel also got to tell Mary the good news that she was highly favored – the chosen one – to give birth to Jesus.
WOW!! What a cool job Gabriel has! He is sent straight from God to bring good news. We also get an opportunity to have a cool job for the Lord. We get to share the good news of Jesus to everybody, too.
What do you want to be when you grow up? Who knows. But I do know that as I grow in Christ, I want to be the deliverer of good news along the way. I want to show love to others and let them see Jesus. WOW! I guess we ALL really have a cool job!
