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Hi everyone! I hope you’re enjoying the Advent season, entering fully into the joy of our Lord’s coming, and not feeling too swamped by the flurry of activity that so often builds as we make our way through December.

Last week, I mentioned that I often spend time reflecting on Christmas carols and songs as I make my way through Advent. This week, I’ve found myself pondering the very first Christmas song. This song goes back to the very beginning. In fact, it was composed before Jesus’ birth—it was occasioned by the angel’s news to Mary that she would be the mother of the Messiah. The song is from Luke 1:46-55, and it goes like this:

How my soul praises the Lord! How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!
For He has paid attention to His lowly servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed,
For the Mighty One has done great things for me. Holy is His name!

He shows mercy to those who honor Him, generation after generation.
He does mighty things:

Scattering those who are proud in their thoughts and hearts,
Bringing down those who are powerful, and lifting up the humble,
Satisfying the hungry with good things,
But sending the rich away with empty hands.

He has helped His people—His servant Israel—
Remembering to be merciful to Abraham and to his descendants,
As He promised to bring salvation through them.

It doesn’t rhyme, and the lyrics would be hard to set to modern music. But it’s a wonderful song, remembering God’s plan to bring redemption to the world through the “seed” of Abraham; recognizing that God is powerful, righteous, and gracious; and celebrating the ways that His eternal goodness has resulted in very specific and personal blessings for Mary, the author. It’s a great example of worship that brings together good theology (what God is like) with personal experience (what God has done for me).

Mary is a good example in lots of ways. She wasn’t very old, and she wasn’t rich, educated, or influential. But she was a thoughtful young lady who knew her Lord, knew His Word, and knew His voice well enough to recognize it when God spoke to her. She was an ordinary person. I don’t believe she was somehow on a different level of holiness than everyone else, or that she is another mediator between us and God, the way some people have come to think of her. But she was profoundly blessed by the grace of God, and she was a remarkable model of faith and maturity. She certainly deserves our respect and appreciation.

This week, we’re going to think about Mary as an example of one important spiritual quality that we all need at Christmas time: the quality of peace. Mary’s life was a roller-coaster of exciting, troubling, blessed, and difficult events. She grew up in a hard place during a hard political time, but seemed poised to enjoy a quiet and decent life. That was interrupted by a pregnancy that would create all sorts of problems, but one that was also a once-in-all-history privilege. She made difficult journeys and lived under difficult circumstances. Yet God drew people around her—rich people and poor people, holy people and very ordinary people—to worship and proclaim the wonder of her Son. She never had much, but her needs were met, sometimes very miraculously. She watched her son grow as a godly and delightful young man, but no doubt wondered at the strange ways he was different from others. She saw Him embark on a preaching and healing mission that was absolutely amazing, but sometimes she and the other family members were puzzled by Him, and it would have been hard to watch Him rejected and slandered by some of the most powerful onlookers.

She watched Him die on a cross. And she learned that He defeated death, rising in new life as the beginning of a new day in God’s plan. She experienced the coming of the Holy Spirit in her Son Jesus’ name. She saw the church grow. She went with the church through persecution, and joy, and fruitfulness.

What a crazy life! What an amazing journey. We only get little glimpses of it here and there, but we learn enough to understand that it was a roller coaster ride indeed.

And in all the glimpses we get, Mary somehow keeps her head together. We don’t see her panic, or despair, or lose her sense of centeredness. She seems to be a model of peace. I think her behavior is one of the reasons we have carols like “Silent Night,” which paint the coming of Jesus as happening in an atmosphere of quiet. When everything was going crazy, Mary found a way to connect her experience back to the faithfulness of God (as we read in her song), and so she models peace.

We’ll talk about her example this coming Sunday as we think about Christmas Peace. If you want to read ahead, I recommend reviewing her familiar story in Luke 1:26-56 and Luke 2:1-40. (You can go beyond that to the end of the chapter as well, though that takes us beyond the Christmas story.)

 

Our Christmases can get pretty hectic, though few of us deal with things quite as extreme as what Mary did. We all need Christmas peace. May the God of peace and Jesus, the Prince of Peace be a source of peace to you this holiday season. Have a wonderful week!

 

—Pastor Ken