12.06 | Magnificat
Luke 1:26-56
'And Mary said,“My soul magnifies the Lord”’
Luke 1:46
As a child, I once was given a microscope for my birthday.
I must have been around eight years old, and I remember that the box had a picture of Bill Oddie on the front. The microscope came with a selection of pre-filled glass slides, and a number of blank slides that you could add your own items to for closer inspection. I remember searching the garden for treasures that might work. The wing of an insect, a torn leaf, a petal of a flour, the wing of a butterfly. The detail of these tiny things blew my mind. The intricacy of patterns, the colours, the unexpected shapes. Nothing had actually changed size, but the simple act of magnification transformed my perspective on the most insignificant looking objects of our back garden.
Mary’s song today is among—if not the—the most famous in the Bible. Denominations across the globe have found the words of Mary to be so beautiful that they have made them to be central in their worship—from the Roman Catholic to the Eastern Orthodox to the Lutheran and the Anglican. The traditional name for the song is the Magnificat, taken from the first word in the Greek version of the song:
Magnifies.
The Greek word is megalunō, and it means, quite literally, ‘to enlarge, increase, or magnify,’ or, metaphorically, ‘to extol or declare something as great.’
My soul magnifies the Lord.
The power of this opening is maybe even more significant when we think about Mary’s situation. A glib reading might imagine that Mary will be thrilled with this pregnancy. But, then again, we need to consider how great the challenges of this pregnancy would have been for her.
You will carry a child, and nobody will know who the father is.
Your betrothed husband may find this story about divine conception difficult to swallow.
You, a peasant teenager, will be entrusted with raising the Messiah King of Israel, the Son of God Himself.
Everything you’d expected from your future is now completely changed.
What will your mother-in-law think?
How would you feel?
My guess is that, were this me, my soul would start to magnify something quite different. I think my soul might start to magnify my fears—fears about my reputation, my health, my career, my financial security, my relationships. I suspect that my soul would far more readily put under the microscope of my gaze all the uncomfortable and interruptive elements of this impossible new reality.
And yet Mary doesn’t. She magnifies the Lord.
In the face of her fears, she puts God under the microscope of her gaze, focusing instead on His beauty and goodness and care and power.
In the face of her discomfort, she puts her eyes on the power of the God who sees the poor and humble and establishes them in the greatness of His care.
In the face of her interrupted story, she zooms in and sharpens the focus upon the story of the Creator, who has been working out a plan through history, of which she now is playing a part of immense and beautiful significance.
Worship is the great interruptive event into the atmosphere of our souls. It stops counting the scale of our problems—magnifiying them with ever greater precision and analysis—and plays a different game. It is the great shift of focus, the ultimate transformation of perspective. It is the repositioning of the person who inhabits the tenacity of hope, refusing to allow those crushing and cramped voices of fear to send us scuttling into hiding, but instead invites our soul to plant our feet again, to raise our eyes and defy our fears with the bellowing cry of faith.
For this soul will magnify the Lord.
Reflect:
What fears am I magnifying right now.
Return to the character of God. Magnify Him in thanks and words and song. And ask the Spirit to help restore your soul in the truth of these words.
This is rarely an instantaneous shift, but the journey to freedom always starts with little steps. Let’s take another one today.
Pray:
Father of all goodness,
My soul magnifies
Many things.
I focus in, obsess, analyse, and describe—
In minute detail—
The scale and nature of the problems that I face.
My soul has magnified my fears.
But Father,
I’ve had more than enough of this:
It leaves me anxious and small.
And so, today,
My soul magnifies the Lord.
Spirit of God,
Would you empower this work of realignment in me,
That my life journey may be,
Day by day,
An increasing strength of focus,
Unto joyous attentiveness
To the character of the Father.
And that I may endlessly sing
My soul magnifies the Lord.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
2 Kings 16-17 | Psalm 74:1-17