What Is Your Magnificat?

On the Sunday of the children's Christmas pageant, Ray spoke briefly on Mary's song, the Magnificat, drawing on a visit the church made to Ein Kerem in Israel. He read through the song and asked the congregation to consider what their own Magnificat might look like, what God might be asking them to trust him with in their own lives.

What was said

Ray opened by describing Ein Kerem, a small hill-country town in Israel where the church group had visited a site called the Church of the Visitation. The church commemorates the moment when Mary, having heard from the angel that she would bear God's son, ran to meet her relative Elizabeth. Elizabeth's response, including her cry that the baby in her womb leapt for joy, set the stage for what came next: Mary breaking into spontaneous praise.

That praise is what the church calls the Magnificat, a word taken from the first word of Mary's song in its Latin version. Ray noted that many people in the congregation may not be familiar with the term, but that the song itself says a great deal about who Mary was. She had already told the angel, "May it be to me just as you have said," yielding herself to be used by God. The song that follows from that posture of surrender is one of recognition that God had done something extraordinary in her life.

Ray walked through the song, pausing on the line where Mary says God "had regard for the humble state of his bond servant." He pointed out that Mary was not wealthy or well known, and that the chapters that follow in Luke show real difficulty and even desperate circumstances. The recognition that God was at work in her lowly situation was not something she had to force. It came from understanding what the angel's visit meant, and she named it plainly: the mighty one has done great things for me.

Ray connected Mary's humility to a broader principle, that God resists pride but gives grace to the humble. He read through the rest of the song, including Mary's language about rulers brought down and the hungry filled with good things, and her reference to God's mercy remembered toward Abraham and his descendants. That line about Abraham gave Ray a moment to note that the real inheritance was never about physical lineage, but about the faith of Abraham, who believed God and had it counted to him as righteousness.

Ray closed by turning the question toward the congregation. Mary's situation was unique, she alone would bear God's only son. But he asked what each person's own Magnificat might be, what God is directing them toward, where they might be able to say that God has done great things and has chosen them for something. The children's Sunday made the point naturally, Ray said, because nothing illustrates the praise of a humble heart quite like a child singing it.