In this passage Mary utters forth a beautiful song of praise.
She begins by saying, “my soul magnifies the Lord.”
What is it to magnify the Lord?
We hear words like this and mouth them and scarcely know what they mean.
The word magnify, coming from the Greek language-
Megalunei-
means to make great- to declare greatness, to extol or exalt greatly.
In secular usage it means to focus upon.
When you focus on something, the lenses in your eye concentrates solely upon the object that it wants to see, blocking out everything else and concentrates strictly upon it to bring it into greater view and clarity.
Mary does this not only in this song of praise, but also in her life.
She was a godly, pure young woman of
Nazareth but in light of all that God was doing in her life Mary brings God into greater focus- perhaps greater focus than she had ever done in her entire life.
We do that when unusual things happen to us- but more often than not it is not an everyday occurrence.
Why? Because we get caught up in life focusing instead upon our own needs and our own problems and our own wants and our own desires where God gets pushed to the periphery instead of at the center.
Mary realized she could not do that in light of what had happened in her life, and as a result, her heart bursts forth into praise with these words:
“My soul magnifies the Lord!”
Mary’s heart gives the fullest expression possible to what God is doing in her life, and she serves as a marvelous example of how we can do this too. Praise is an offering of expression back to God. Deep within the heart of all of us is the desire to praise the Lord. It is born within us- innate and latent just dying for a chance to get out. But most of us seldom if ever come into contact with it because of our focus- not on what God is doing or who God is, but what is going on around us. But deep down within us, there is a song.
About ten years ago, my parents and my family were enjoying an outdoor fire one summer evening. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows as the fire crackled before us. My brother put a large, gnarly log on the flames. As the flames licked around the log, we began to hear a high-pitched squeal or whistle emerging from the log. The longer the log burned, the higher the pitch of the tune became until, under pressure, the log snapped with a loud pop- forceful enough to blow a few embers out of the fire. My dad commenting on the experience, said that deep within that log was a chamber or pocket of air that had been trapped in it for decades. The pressure grew as the fire heated up the air, which came forth from a tiny crack leading to the outside. The pressure got so much that finally the log exploded.
We enjoyed listening to this interesting fact, I reflect now on the fact that all of us have a song down deep within us. That song is a song of praise- like what Mary had. Have you heard that song? Do you have a song in your heart today? What is the song of your life? Does it magnify the Lord?
Have a blessed day!
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