“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.”
Luke 1:46-49
Much of the birth narrative we know and retell each Advent season comes from the gospel of Luke. Luke’s gospel is filled with individuals, people on the periphery of life, not too important, not too significant. People that many would say weren’t even worth the ink and papyrus that was used on them. But Jesus sees their worth. And Luke loved to tell their story.
If we want to truly look at someone who lived on the periphery of the rich and famous, there is Mary. We know that she was a descendent of King David, yet we know that her and her husband were exceedingly poor.
One can say that there was something about this Mary that God saw in her. She was homesick. She was homesick for a better place, a time when she would know that she was indeed blessed and that God’s presence was with her. A place where the lowliest of lows, the humble, the righteous, the faithful would be raised up and honored. A place for which they would no longer live in despair, without hope, that they would have a foundation to rest upon in their lives.
Her homesickness could only be satisfied by a Savior, one from God, who would make things whole again, to set right the world. She had a longing; she was homesick for a kingdom not of this world. A longing for a Savior. Maybe it wasn’t that God chose the humble and the poor, rather it was the humble and poor who were the only ones who listened and obeyed. The ones that were homesick for a place that they never been to but knew was there and was coming.
Coming home, that’s probably the best way to describe salvation. When we come home to God, we come home to ourselves; to be the image of God for which we were created. When we come home to God, we begin to sense that maybe this is really who I am. This realization breaks out into the mundane and routine circumstances of our lives. And when we realize that it brings great joy, great excitement, passions of delight that causes us to break out into song and praise. Just as Mary did.
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