God’s Glory Through Mary
Luke 1:46-56, 1 Samuel 2:1-10, Luke 14:11, Isaiah 66:2
Okay imagine this: you are a young woman waiting to be married to this guy Joseph. You’ve never been with a man because it was culturally not great, but more importantly it was an act of obedience to God. Now this angel comes to you and tells you that actually you’re pregnant with the coming Messiah aka the Son of God. And you might be thinking, ‘how can this be? I shouldn’t be able to be pregnant.’ Well, that angel answers you by saying that “the power of the most high will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35) and “nothing will be impossible with God”. So yea, God’s power is greater than trivial things like how babies are made.
But let’s just move past that for a second because we’re not talking about the fact that God did this impossible thing, we’re talking about Mary’s reaction to it. I think I speak for most of us when I say that I would have been freaked out. First of all, she shouldn’t even be able to have a baby at this point. Secondly, this is going to look really suspicious to both her fiance and everyone else around her. And maybe she thought about those things, but they are small in the grand scheme of things that God is doing here. He has chosen her to bring our Savior into the world so that He might one day die on a cross to save us from ourselves.
This young teenage girl has been given the most important task in human history and she accepts it with the utmost humility. She doesn’t think of how this will affect her life and she doesn’t talk about how important she must be for God to choose her. In her song of praise she throws herself down in front of the Father and calls herself a slave (Luke 1:48). The Lord is her master and there is nothing more that she could do with her life than obey Him. But why? Why is she so willing to give complete obedience to this God?
The answer is that God’s glory is so great that she can’t help but be in complete awe of Him. Not only has He done great things for her by blessing her with this baby, but His mercy is for ALL who fear him (v. 50). He has been faithful to His people by taking care of them from generation to generation. In fact, Mary’s song here strongly mirrors Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel 2. Hannah also was given a child by the Lord and she too sings about His power. Both women recognize God’s ability to give and take away and in that he is greater than any human could ever be (1 Samuel 2:6-8). Nothing is in our control, but it is in God’s. Why don’t we mimic these women, what keeps us from emulating this humility?
Like Mary, we should go to God as humble servants not because He is a scary all powerful being, but because He is a loving Father who chooses to take care of us. Mary knew that despite all the craziness of her situation God had her best interests at heart and would see her through. She knew that she was imperfect and needed God to help her in the ways that she couldn’t help herself. It’s not like we’re any different than Mary. We are also imperfect people desperately in need of a Savior. But the beautiful thing is that our weakness shows us this need for saving. We can be weak because we have a God that is strong. Don’t let your pride keep you from experiencing God’s comforting power and his praise worthy glory. Mary didn’t.
Wonder:
In what ways are you choosing to be more in awe of your own strength than God’s power?
How can you humble yourself to the Father this week?
