Mary’s Christmas Song
By Jeff Cranston
Christmas songs have already been filling our offices, our favorite stores and our radio stations. For a few short weeks each year, Christmas carols seem to unify the world. We sing these rich Christmas songs to remind us that the Light of the World has in fact broken into our darkness.
Read Luke 1:46-55. In this passage, Mary sings a song when she learned from the angel Gabriel that she was going to conceive a child. But not just any child. He would be the Son of the Most High God and would be conceived in her by the Holy Spirit.
Mary didn’t sing a sad song or even a song of questions and doubt. Instead, she sang a song of praise because she recognized that Jesus’ coming meant God was intimately mindful of her, mighty for her and merciful to her. There is a lot of wonderful richness in Mary’s song as well as a few recurring themes about the character of God. Let’s take a look:
1. God has your picture on His phone’s lock screen.
Now Mary did not say that, obviously, but the underlying truth is the same. When I wake up my phone, a picture of Darlene and me with our four grandchildren pops up. It’s the first thing I see every time my phone comes on.
Does it ever feel like no one really notices you? Certainly, in our celebrity-obsessed culture, it’s easy to feel like we don’t measure up by comparison with those making headlines.
Mary certainly could have felt that way. She was a ninth-grade girl living in the small village of Nazareth. Mary’s prospects for an exciting life from a worldly standpoint were bleak. But after Gabriel spoke to Mary, there was no doubt in her mind that God was very much mindful of her (see verse 48). Our Father God is an amazingly mindful God. Your picture is on His screen. Let’s respond to that by growing in our mindfulness of Him.
2. God’s power is real and available to us.
Besides reminding us that God is mindful of us, in her song of praise Mary reminds us that He is mighty for us. Verse 49 says, “For the Mighty One has done great things for me; and holy is his name.” In verses 51 and 52, Mary said, “He has done mighty deeds with His arm; He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their heart. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, and has exalted those who were humble.”
Take a look around our world today and it’d be easy to say, “Really, Mary? Really? Haven’t you read about ISIS or North Korea or parts of Africa or a number of other geo-political situations? I still see plenty of proud despots on their thrones.” Mary wasn’t oblivious to the political realities in her day. Mary’s song focused so much on God’s might making all things right because she likely knew Isaiah’s Messianic prophecy from roughly 700 years before. She recognized this incarnation event as the mighty fulfillment of numerous promises of God over centuries of Israel waiting and longing for redemption and deliverance.
3. God is merciful.
In Luke 1:47, Mary sings, “… my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” Mary knows she needs a savior just as much as the next person. There is no one righteous … no, not one. Mary needed, just as you and I need, a merciful Savior … and God, in His mercy, sent His son.
But thanks be to God that with our guilty verdict, He offers merciful pardon. He sings His light into our darkness. He incarnates His life into our barrenness. His Spirit overshadows all that is chaotic and discordant and brings harmony and shalom to our lives. And He does that in a way that is infinitely more “blessed” than what Mary got to experience as the biological mother of Jesus.
So how do we respond to this Christmas song that God has sung into our darkness. How do we respond to the reality that He is intimately MINDFUL of us and MIGHTY for us and MERCIFUL to us?
Don’t be silent. Don’t stifle His song. Those around us who don’t yet trust Jesus EXPECT and NEED us to share about what Christmas means, and about what it means to us.
Jeff Cranston is lead pastor of LowCountry Community Church in Bluffton, South Carolina.
To learn more about “Mary’s Song,” watch Pastor Jeff’s message: