Thank you to Mark R for this week’s MWB
Week 3
We have been looking at Mary’s prayer of praise, the Magnificat, and how she magnifies the Lord as she sings about His Saving power, and how He uses weak and seemingly insignificant unknowns like Mary (and us) to display His great power.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD”
How true this is as the Lord chooses an unknown teenage girl to display His power through the baby growing inside her. He will be the One on whom the whole of history hinges. He will be the Saviour of the world.
And so we look at the last way that Mary magnifies her Lord in verse 54 and 55 of Luke 1: “He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.”
From the opening chapters of Genesis, up until this moment when Mary opens her mouth to praise the Lord, she is reminding herself and us that God is merciful and keeps His promises.
When God first revealed Himself to Moses on Mount Sinai, in Exodus 34:6, we read: “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness
That mercy is shown consistently in the Lord’s dealings with His wayward people in the Old Testament, but now comes to fruition in the Child growing in Mary’s womb.
Mary magnifies her Saviour
She magnifies the amazing truth that God’s strength is seen in and through the weak rather than the strong
And now she magnifies the merciful God Who always keeps His promises…
How about us?
How are we magnifying the Lord? How are we enlarging His greatness?
Are we reminding ourselves of His ongoing mercy to us day after day, showering on us, as James reminds us, of ‘more grace’, grace to begin the day with a new start because of our Saviour’s finished work on the cross, and ‘more grace’ to finish the day He has given us.
As we conclude our thoughts about Mary’s ‘magnifying prayer’ today, let’s focus on how we can magnify the Lord as we go about our daily life wherever we are today.