Luke 1:39-56

Be Still: Father God, as I open your Word, please teach me something new or remind me of something true about who you are today. Amen

Read: Luke 1:39-56 

And Mary said: ‘My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name.’ (v46-49 NIV) 

Encounter: Today’s passage features the ‘Magnificat’ which is Mary’s song of praise and worship, as she magnifies the Lord. It gives us a beautiful, and rare, insight into the character and nature of Jesus’ mother. 

In Mary’s song we see a woman who loved God deeply. She begins with praise and adoration. She declares that ‘the Mighty One has done great things for me.'

In the Magnificat we see someone who not only loves the Lord but knows the Lord and his heart. We see someone who knows God’s heart for lifting ‘the humble’ and ‘the hungry.' 

This is much more than a nice, sweet worship song, – this is, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes it, ‘a hard, strong, uncompromising song of bringing down rulers from their thrones and humbling the lords of this world, of God’s power and of the powerlessness of men … ​​This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings’. The mother of Jesus was a woman of faith and deep love of God, with a heart for justice and the poor. In Mary, we don’t find a meek or passive woman; we find a woman of fierce worship and prayer, who believed that the Lord would fulfil his promises to her.

Music and songs so often set a tone - Mary’s song sets the tone of what is to come. This baby in her womb would lift the humble, and bring down rulers from their thrones, and fill the hungry with good things, and scatter the proud, and perform mighty deeds, and be known from generation to generation. 

Apply: The Magnificat is Mary telling God what she loves about him. What would your ‘Magnificat’ be? What do you love about God? Spend some time articulating this to him by speaking it out or writing it down. 

Devote: The ‘Magnificat’ is a beautiful prayer we can use. Pray through it, verse by verse, using it as a springboard for your own prayers.