Mary's Song and God's Glory

Friday, December 23, 2022

Mary responded, “Oh, how my soul praises the Lord.  How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!  For he took notice of his lowly servant girl, and from now on all generations will call me blessed.  For the Mighty One is holy, and he has done great things for me.  He shows mercy from generation to generation to all who fear him.  His mighty arm has done tremendous things!  He has scattered the proud and haughty ones.  He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble.  He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands.  He has helped his servant Israel and remembered to be merciful.  For he made this promise to our ancestors, to Abraham and his children forever.”  Luke 1:46-55

There is something of an idyllic impression which persists about Mary, the teen virgin;  she is untouched, and therefore “perfect”.  That is not supported in Scripture.  In fact, Scripture goes to great lengths to debunk that notion.  Old Testament prophet, Isaiah pointed to the universality of human sin:

We are all infected and impure with sin.  When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags.  Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind.  Isaiah 64:6

New Testament apostle Paul reaffirmed total human depravity:

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:  For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Romans 3:10, 23

If all that falls short of convincing, even Jesus said it plainly:

“Only God is truly good.  Mark 10:18

What is untainted in Mary’s case is not sinlessness of the vessel, but the immaculateness of conception…the fact that Jesus had no earthly father.  Mary was simply the host chosen by God to participate in God’s plan.  It was a miracle that she became pregnant, sidestepping the order of things in the natural, or biological sense.  But there was no circumventing the spiritual order of things; Mary was a human, born of a lengthy line of sinners, stretching back to Adam.  It’s often made note of Mary’s (and therefore Jesus’) family heritage, which included harlots (Rahab), and conspirators in murder (King David).  For God to choose Mary, it was the love of God for all humanity, laying aside the prerogatives of deity, choosing mercy and forgiveness to offer holiness to undeserving humankind.  It was nothing less, or more, than grace

It is no wonder Mary sang a song of blessing; even as a human, especially another sinful human like you or me, she could see she wasn’t worthy, except for the gracious love of God wrapping holy arms around her life.  She was overwhelmed by kindness and joy.

For You Today  

We have an immediate identity with Mary.  She wasn’t naïve enough to imagine she was beginning a road-trip paved with rose petals and sunshine; her position was dangerous and swimming upstream all the way.  Her “blessedness” (which we only see from this side of the story) is that she would be overshadowed by the glory it would bring to God. 

Mary’s story, God’s glory, our choice to follow.  True disciples of Jesus Christ can never be bored with hum-drum lives; it’s a path like no other.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

   Highly Favored   and   Mary's Song; Our Song

Images:  Title Annunciazione by DaVinci via Wikimedia Commons   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Epiphany

 

Thursday, January 6, 2022

“Arise, Jerusalem! Let your light shine for all to see.  For the glory of the Lord rises to shine on you.  Darkness as black as night covers all the nations of the earth, but the glory of the Lord rises and appears over you.  Isaiah 60:1-2

My mother never talked about her twin sisters.  They died in the cradle during the influenza pandemic of 1918, around the time Mom was born.  As today, that was a dark time in this world’s history.  Approximately 500 million people were infected, and 1-in-10 died from its onslaught, taking about 1% of the world’s population.

If there is anything we can count upon in dark times, it’s how brightly the light shines through the backdrop of night, a perfect frame for the coming light.  

And that describes Epiphany well.  The coming of our Lord to a murky world had nothing to do with a biological darkness, but rather a spiritual darkness that enveloped 100% of the population.  The prophets preached that, as well as the New Testament apostles, that there are no exceptions; sin is a human virus, and we are all infected.

And then, the light dawned.  It was the appearance of light in great darkness.  Just as the greatest dark must give way to the smallest light, so the ravenous bitterness of total darkness must vanish in the presences of perfect light.  And that was Who was laid in the manger-cradle…the bright and Morning Star,[1] the one who would declare to the entire world:

“I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”  John 8:12b

For You Today

Scripture and history both affirm that Jesus was (and is) the light of the world.  The question for all of us is:  Is He the light that has come into YOUR world?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

For other posts on this text see Catch and The Fullness of Time

---

[1] Revelation 22:16