In the movie Castaway, Tom Hanks plays the role of Chuck Nolan, a Federal Express employee who’s the only survivor on a FedEx jet that crashes on an uninhabited South Sea island. Among the few odd items that wash up from the wreck there’s an addressed package with angel wings on it that he never opens. After four years, he builds a raft and is rescued, taking with him the unopened box with the angel wings. Arriving back in the United States, the first thing he does is to deliver that box to a rural farmhouse in Texas. When there’s no answer he leaves the box with a note that says, “Thanks. This package saved my life.”

Somehow, the unopened package with the angel’s wings gave Chuck Nolan the hope to survive in a desperate place. And that’s what happened with the angel’s words to Mary. When the angel Gabriel appeared to young Mary and told her she was going to be the mother of God’s Son, she didn’t understand the full meaning of the angel’s words. She had no idea how all this was going to play out in her personal life. She was engaged. She was planning a wedding. She was anticipating a family someday, but certainly not now! But she found hope in those words that got her through her troubles.

When troubles surround me, I read the Bible. I find hope simply in the realization that God speaks to me. Even when I don’t fully understand everything, like Mary, I get hope from God’s words of promise.