October 14, 2019 – Luke 1:46–47

And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”
—Luke 1:46–47

Mary sings.12 When God shows himself, what music will suffice for the grand psalm of adoring wonder? In the Incarnation, it is the divine person who is revealed, wrapped in a veil of our lesser clay. Worthy of peerless music is the fact that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). There is no longer a great gulf fixed between God and his people; the humanity of Christ has bridged it. We can no longer think that God sits on high, indifferent to our wants and woes, for God has come down to our humble state. No longer need we lament that we can never participate in the moral glory and purity of God. Let us dream no longer in somber sadness that we cannot draw near to God, so that he will really hear our prayers and pity our necessities, since Jesus has become bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, born a babe as we are born, living as human as we must live, bearing the same infirmities and sorrows, and bowing his head to the same death. O can’t we come with confidence by this new and living way to the throne of the heavenly grace, when Jesus meets us as Immanuel—God with us?
The stress of the Virgin’s canticle is laid on God’s special grace to her. Those little words, the personal pronouns, tell us that it was truly a personal affair with her. My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. The Savior was, in a special sense, hers. You can never know the joy of Mary unless Christ becomes truly and really yours. But, oh! when he is yours, yours within, reigning in your heart, changing your nature, subduing your corruptions—yours within, an inexpressible and glorious joy—oh! then who can restrain your tongue?
The natural conception of the Savior’s holy body was not one-tenth so fitting a theme for congratulation as the spiritual conception of the holy Jesus within your heart when he will be in you the hope of glory. My dear friend, if Christ is yours, there is no song on earth too high, too holy for you to sing. No, there is no song that thrills from angelic lips, no note that thrills archangel’s tongue, in which you may not join. Even this day, the holiest, the happiest, the most glorious of words and thoughts and emotions belong to you. Use them! God help you to enjoy them. His be the praise while yours is the comfort evermore. Amen.
—C. H. Spurgeon