Magnify the Lord
“And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Luke 1:46-47
These words from the book of Luke confronted me this morning.
Years ago, before I was a Christian, I had a collection of over 100 Santas. They were everywhere at Christmas. Though they were not magnified, they did multiply. I kept getting more. As the Lord was working on my heart He showed me how big those Santas were in my home. Santa was receiving more glory than the Lord! One hundred Santas is a lot of Santas – no matter how far you spread them out.
In the verses above, Mary had just been told by the angel Gabriel that she would bear a son. She asked how and he explained that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her and the child she would bear would be holy – the Son of God.
When I don’t understand what God is doing I eventually come to accept it but I ask more questions than Mary does in her encounter with this messenger of God. I like to tell myself it is because she had a tangible being in front of her. She was seeing and hearing what was to come. She was left with questions but she really could not doubt that her instructions were from the Lord.
The truth is that Mary had more faith than I do. She accepted the call of God with a question and then said, “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your Word.”
When Mary went to Elizabeth her response to her cousins words of welcome, affirmation, and encouragement, were to glorify God – or more accurately – to “magnify the Lord.” The next verse says she rejoiced in God her Savior!
To magnify the Lord means to make Him bigger. When I read about Mary’s servant response I realized my need to make Him bigger in my life and in my home. In John 3:30 John the Baptizer says it this way, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
The Santas are gone now but the lesson of who was receiving the glory in my home is not. Many Christians have abandoned the celebration of Christmas because of the secularization of it, the ways of the world get magnified rather than the ways of the Lord.
I still enjoy celebrating the birth of Christ, my Savior. I am aware from Mary’s words that my life, including my celebration of Christmas, needs to be under scrutiny. Jesus needs to increase in my celebrations.
In hindsight, who or what was magnified in the way you and I celebrated the birth of our Savior? Are others seeing us rejoice in Jesus, the Son of God? What do we need to plan to do differently next year?