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I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise; I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word.¹

No wonder God says of David, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do my will.’² Songs had a way of expressing deep emotions beyond words. It was a form of worship. Likewise, we find in the 1^st chapter of Luke, Mary’s Song³ known as the Magnificat. It is named after the first word of its first line in Latin (“Magnificat anima mea Dominum” or “My soul magnifies the Lord”).⁴

The birth of Jesus came during the bleakest and most hopeless time in human history. For the last time that God spoke was during the time of Malachi. In fact, the book seems open ended. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”⁵ After those words there was 400 years without God’s guidance; God didn’t utter a single word. Those times were the dark ages; each tribe and nation concocting their own notion of truth. They were like blind mice leading other blind mice groping for direction in the dark.

Can you imagine the bewilderment, if not fear, that Mary experienced when the angel Gabriel stood before her saying, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”⁶. . . .“Do not be afraid, Mary, . . . you will conceive . . . and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. . . .”⁷ Yet her knowledgeable and humble reply, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”⁸

After she visited Elizabeth, her cousin (who was likewise pregnant with John the Baptist). And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. . . . filled with the Holy Spirit, she exclaimed, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! . . .”⁹

And Mary burst in song, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed: . . .”¹⁰

Indeed like Mary we have every reason to rejoice and hope for God is mindful of us. David was precise when he sang, O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!¹¹