Songs of Christmas: Hope
Daily Scripture Readings
Monday I Samuel 1:1-8
Tuesday I Samuel 1:9-18
Wednesday I Samuel 1:19-28
Thursday I Samuel 2:1-11
Friday Luke 1:39-45
Saturday Luke 1:62-79
Opening Prayer
Lord, let me sing a song of hope for all who need to hear it during this season. In Jesus name, AMEN
DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:
Mary's prayer teaches us how to pray. Like a good teacher, she models for us how to receive the blessing of God and turn it back around to bless the Almighty. As we pray the Magnificat today, her words become our words. Her prayer becomes our prayer. We are the lowly servants whose generations will be blessed. It is our souls that rejoice that the promise of God through previous generations has come to fruition in us, lowly servants of the most high God. When Mary says “the almighty has done great things for me,” we are acknowledging Mary’s claim that God has blessed her as an actual person in history and our tradition. But in another sense our spirit concurs along with Mary's in rejoicing in God our Savior. We are the continued generation of Abraham; not a generation of flesh and blood, but of spirit and faith. This is why we can praise God and say, “the Almighty has done great things for me.” As Paul describes in Romans, we have been grafted in, we have grown together with the promise made to previous generations. In the incarnation, we as humankind are elevated, which is a great thing not just for us but for the name of God the Almighty.
The prerequisite for receiving God's mercy is to fear the Lord above all else. Fear God more than political authorities, more than religious leaders, more than the idols we have constructed for ourselves in an attempt to make us feel secure in this life.
Mary puts on our lips the words that would turn authorities and ideologies on their heads so that we will leave behind our self-made idols and turn to the Lord. She also teaches us what it means to carry Jesus within us faithfully. She hears the good news of the coming of Christ, and lives into that reality in faith and praise.
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