Read a preview of The Christmas We Didn't Expect, a new Advent devotional from David Mathis, executive editor for Desiring God. These reflections help us to lift our eyes to wonder of the incarnation and worship the one who came to save us and make our futures certain. The following extract is a devotion for the first day in December.
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. Luke 1:46-47
For too long, I misunderstood Mary’s Christmas song in Luke 1:46-55 as if it were a journal entry from a peasant girl. After all, I thought, Mary must have understood so little at this point, right?
An angel had told her that she would bear God’s long-awaited king (Luke 1:32-33), and that her relative Elizabeth also had miraculously conceived (Luke 1:36). Mary is stunned, no doubt, at these unexpected graces and goes with haste to visit her relative (Luke 1:39), and yet she still seems to know so little when she offers her song of praise.
However, the Gospel writer, Luke, does not treat Mary’s poetic words as a mere aside. They are the high point of his first chapter. As the rest of his Gospel makes plain, Luke stewarded what tight space he had with great care, not as an unbiased reporter but as an inspired spokesman for the risen Christ. And while Mary’s “Magnificat,” as the church has come to call her song (based on its first word in Latin), may sound strange to us today compared with other carols, her lyrics represent some of the most important Christmas lines ever penned.
They give us one of the most profound glimpses into the heart of God in all the Scriptures. (Perhaps you might want to pause and read Luke 1:46-55 before going any further.)
The song has three distinct parts. The opening lines (v 46-47) declare what Mary is doing in the hymn: praising God. Then (v 48-49) she explains why: because of what God has done for her. Finally, the bulk of her song (v 49-55) marvels at the surprising glory of her God, significant not only to her at that first Christmas but to all his people, all the time.
That final section (v 49-55), which is remarkably God-centered (he is the subject of every verb), is the heart of Mary’s hymn and is a celebration of God and his ways, which are so counter to our natural human expectations. Mary celebrates the kind of God he is: different than our instincts and shattering our paradigms as he shows his strength not by recruiting the strong but by rescuing the weak.
When Mary gives the reason for her praise (v 48-49), it is curiously general. As such it follows the pattern of the Psalms. This is emphatically not a personal journal entry, but a song designed for the people of God, in all places, for generations to come.
Reflections for Advent that help us to lift our eyes to the wonder of the incarnation and worship Jesus.
Here, as a skilled theologian—or simply as one well-steeped in the Scriptures (compare Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel 2)—Mary holds up the heart of God’s holiness (“holy is his name,” Luke 1:49): that he is, in himself, of an order altogether different and greater than his creatures. He consistently acts contrary to our human intuitions. His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor his ways our ways, but they are higher—as high as the heavens are above the earth (Isaiah 55:8-9). This God rallies to the weak, not the strong.
He chooses what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. He chooses what is weak in the world to shame the strong. He chooses “what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not”—like a forgotten town called Nazareth and an unwed young woman carrying a child conceived without a human father—“to bring to nothing things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). He humbles the strong and magnifies his strength by exalting the weak. Christmas turns the world upside down.
Hasn’t this been our experience of this God and his world? Over and over again, just when we think we have figured him out with our infinitesimally small minds, he shatters our assumptions and plans. He turns our world on its head. Mary’s own son will literally embody this peculiar glory of God. And for those of us with eyes to see, like Mary, it is marvelous: the very wisdom of God, worth celebrating in song and in a life of praise.
"This is a life-changing lyric—not just at Christmas but for all of life. God is magnified in his weak people when we, like Mary, rejoice in him. The two are connected."
But even before her celebration of God’s rescue of the weak, Mary begins with an insight that we should not overlook. Her opening lines not only celebrate that God magnifies his strength in the weaknesses of his people but also how. How is God magnified in us? Not through human pride and confidence, nor through human wealth and strength, but through the humble heart that rejoices in him.
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. (Luke 1:46-47)
This is a life-changing lyric—not just at Christmas but for all of life. God is magnified in his weak people when we, like Mary, rejoice in him. The two are connected. God is shown to be magnificent in Mary as she rejoices in him—because we magnify, or honor, or glorify what or whom we enjoy.
We see a glimpse in Mary’s song of what John Piper has called “Christian Hedonism,” and its central insight that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” This is not a peripheral truth for Mary, or at Christmas, or at any time of year, but it is endlessly relevant and will be so eternally for God’s people as we grow in and expand and deepen our enjoyment of God.
We would do well this Advent to listen carefully to Mary’s strange song—strange to humans attuned to the music of the world but thrilling to those who have an ear for the God who is, rather than the one of our imaginations.
Neither Mary’s song nor Christmas itself is a marginal revelation of the true God. Christmas is a window into his very heart. He does indeed look, with mercy, on those who own their humble estate, to exalt them—while he looks, with terrifying justice, on the prideful, to humble them. And for those of us who are weak and heavy laden, God’s ways are marvelous in our eyes and music to our ears.
Father, you humble the proud and exalt the humble, and we stand in awe. We recognize that the way we feel fragile, exhausted, and burdened this Advent may mean we are right where you want us. You sent your Son to help the weak and weary. Open our eyes to the weaknesses we try to ignore and cover over. In your Son, we are safe to own them, and come humbly to you, to rejoice in you and your strong arms, not ours. Magnify yourself in us this season through our rejoicing in you and your Son. In his name we pray. Amen.
To find out more about The Christmas We Didn't Expect and to get your copy, click here.
David Mathis serves as executive editor at desiringGod.org, pastor at Cities Church, and adjunct professor at Bethlehem College and Seminary. He and his wife, Megan, have four children.