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We only appreciate how very very big God is when we think of him as very very small. Here's why - from Mary's song, the Magnificat (Thread).
Mary's poem (Luke 1:46-55) is all about 'magnifying' the Lord: not making him bigger, for that cannot be, but (like looking at a galaxy through a telescope) expanding his size in our hearts and minds so that our thoughts of him get a little nearer to who he really is.
Mary spoke of God's greatness in classic Biblical terms: his power in defeating the powerful and evil, his mercy towards those who fear him, his faithfulness to his covenant. The Old Testament supplies many examples of these things. God is indeed very very big.
Yet Mary's poem contains a surprise. Every verb except the initial 'magnifies', the 'will bless' in v48 and 'to remember' in v54b is in the aorist tense: 'My spirit rejoiced', 'he did great things for me', 'he brought down the mighty' etc.
So Mary is not speaking in general terms about the kind of things God does. She is speaking about a specific thing that he has done. And v47 'my spirit rejoiced' shows it is something he has done *for Mary*.
It's not hard to know what this thing is: for in Mary's virgin womb is conceived the Son of the Most High (v32). God has done all these mighty, merciful, covenant-keeping things in the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity.
Now Mary was told by Gabriel that Elizabeth was in her sixth month (v36). After Mary's song she stays three more months (v56) and leaves before Elizabeth's son John is born. Therefore as Mary sings she is still in her first month of pregnancy.
As Mary magnifies God, the eternal Son of God is a minute speck of humanity in Mary's womb.
It is in the act of uniting his nature of infinite power, limitless mercy and unending faithfulness with utter weakness of a first-trimester baby that God has done all the things of which Mary sings.
He has destroyed the proud by his humility; exalted the humble by making himself less than them; kept the covenant by coming to live as the lowest among his people.
Of course these things are accomplished through the whole of the humiliation of the Son of God in human flesh, which did not diminish as he grew but went lower and lower, even to death on the cross.
And it is as Mary considers how very very small that God has become in Christ that she is able to magnify the Lord. Only in Jesus Christ, the speck in Mary's womb, the crushed man on the cross, is the true size of God revealed.
Why this matters: no human being appreciates the true vast, majestic scale of the true God other than by setting his heart and mind on the tiny and weak person of Jesus Christ.
Therefore the idols of the nations - attempts to imagine what true power and greatness looks like - are left looking pathetic in comparison to him.
Dagon falls on his face. Zeus is exposed as an idle tale. Krishna is an illusion. Allah is a characterless idea. Secular atheism is built on paper-thin abstractions.
What's more, liberal 'christianity' which thought it could appreciate God better by separating him from the actual man Jesus ends up with a god of no substance, as shown by /
/ its vacuous worship (e.g. praying to plants; blessing pets; dressing like Christmas trees) and pathetic aping of secular ethics.
In contrast, those who will think very very small - worshipping the man who was a speck in Mary's womb, who had no beauty that we should desire him, who was poor with nowhere to lay his head, and who died the death of a slave - /
/ - find that in him, and him alone, do they start to realise the true vast size of the true God, the glory and majesty of his worship, the privilege of holy living to reflect and honour his glory.
Mary magnified the Lord. If we would magnify him too, we must do so the same way Mary did. / End
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