Luke 1:46-55
Mary's Song of Praise: The Magnificat
46 And Mary said,“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50 And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
52 he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55 as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”
Luther said of this hymn that Mary learned who God is: "the kind of Lord who does nothing but exalt those of low degree and put down the mighty from their thrones, in short, break what is whole and make whole what is broken." (LW 21:299) This is the great reversal of God's kingdom that we see over and over again in Scripture. Think of the many instances where God breaks down the haughty and lifts up the lowly:
* making Israel a great nation out of the smallest and most insignificant of people on earth
* giving Hannah a baby (Samuel) when she was barren for many, many years and had all but given up
* made David, a small shepherd boy, into a king
* called fishermen to become the lead disciples of Jesus
* gave the first news of Jesus' resurrection to a cadre of women
The lesson here (or at least one lesson) is that with God we should expect the unexpected! What we think it will be is the exact opposite of what God has planned. That keeps things interesting, doesn't it?
Look around you, examine moments in your life where God took your weakness or ineptness or lack of confidence and used that to do something great. See also the place where you thought you were on top, and maybe you were, and God didn't use you - perhaps even allowed you to be humbled. It is only with God that we are anything, can do anything, can be anything in this world. That knowledge comes to us by virtue of the Holy Spirit in what Luther called in the same passage as above, "The Spirit's own school."
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