Observation: Mary announces God's justice before it is even born. She speaks in the past tense about things that she anticipates happening, but haven't happened yet. Jesus hasn't even been born, but she already declares, "The Mighty One has done great things for me...he has scattered the proud...he has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly." In Mary's consciousness, steeped in the Holy Spirit, all of this has already taken place.
Application: I think when our soul is magnifying the Lord, our sense of time is different from when we are magnifying other things. If we take a magnifying glass to our own problems, or much more so to the world's problems, it seems utterly impossible that anyone, even God, could do anything to help. But if we are magnifying the Lord, we see patterns in salvation history. As we dig into the story of God with God's people, it makes sense to be so confident that God will take action in big, liberating ways, because that's what God has done so many times before. To magnify God is to stand at every point in God's story, all at once. Our feet are in the dry soil at the bottom of the Red Sea. Our hair is blowing with the wind of the great chariots that caught Elijah up into the heavens. Our fingertips feel the coldness of the stone, newly rolled from Jesus' empty tomb. Our eyes look up to see him returning, riding on the clouds. And we are also fully present in our own lives, realizing that all this has happened, is happening, will happen to us. Nobody can magnify God in every minute of every day. But we can dwell in the Word, we can lift each other in prayer, and we can take time for silent pondering, like Mary did. When we do that, the veil of time grows very thin indeed. Jesus will come to us, is coming to us, and already has, all at once.
Prayer: With the creation and your faithful people, we cry out, Amen, Come Lord Jesus!
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