When I listen to Mary proclaim the greatness of the Lord I am drawn to the words from the Sound of Music: the hills are alive with songs we sing for a thousand years filling hearts with the sound of music. In recalling the great things that God did for her, Mary’s Magnificat is inviting us to recall the great things that God has done for us.
How is it we rarely dwell on what God is doing for us in our lives? We have our own song to sing.
Mary cheerfully spoke of how God looked upon her in her lowliness. And we, has he not done the same for us? Has He not touched our lives? Did not the Holy Spirit come and rest upon us as happened to Mary when she was told she would conceive.
Mary found comfort and support with her relative Elizabeth, something that many of us share today with our own relatives and neighbors. She spoke of the Almighty doing incredible things for her. And we, did he not do the same for us?
What were and are some of those incredible things? For some it was the union with a spouse and the gifting of children. Did not God allow the women to experience today what Mary experienced, the joy of carrying a child in their womb. There would be sorrows to bear and she bore them but so do parents and individual bear them today.
When I think of my own life, I think of how Samuel was set apart, consecrated to the Lord by his parents and yet was not that also the reality in my own life. Human weakness would cause me to think otherwise but that is negating one of the great things that the Lord has done for me.
In the Scriptures this past week the word joy has been spoken of often. The joy of anticipating so great an event as the birth of Jesus, the joy that Mary experienced in saying yes, the joy that Elizabeth spoke of when she and Mary met, the joy that Zachariah felt when in his old age his wife would bear a son, the joy that Hannah had to have felt with she approached Eli and reminded him how she prayed to have a son and the Lord granted her request and she gave birth to Samuel.
Mary's song has filled hearts for two thousand years. We all have a song to sing that tells of the great things that the Lord has accomplished in our lives. As we carry Jesus Christ into the world every day in every relationship, allow our song to be sung, and like Mary, magnify the Lord.
Amen.
