Season of Preparation Day Eighteen: God’s Blessings

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” Luke 1:46-47

After years of disappointment, suddenly finding out I was expecting twins was big news. It was news I wanted to keep to myself for a while. An exciting and wonderful secret between my husband and myself. I especially didn’t want to tell my parents who were longing for grandchildren. We’d already experienced one miscarriage, and I didn’t want to carry their sorrow and mine too.The plan of secrecy lasted about six hours before I just couldn’t wait any longer.

The feeling of needing to share the good news is the one I recall when I think of the Song of Mary, also known as the Magnificat.

This is the spontaneous song she sang when greeting her cousin Elizabeth, and though I was supremely happy to finally be pregnant, I don’t remember ever once bursting forth in a new song.

But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a new song in my heart. A song of praise and joy and delight that only my soul could hear.

Based on what the doctors had told us, I knew this was a miracle. That I had somehow found favor with the Lord. But at the same time, it humbled me to know that favor couldn’t be because of anything I had done. It came to me through God’s grace and mercy–his blessings.

When Mary experienced the favor of the Lord, she found a song in her heart she couldn’t contain. Receiving God’s blessings and favor should stir the same inside of me. But do I let it?

Have I fallen into the entitlement mindset of the world? Do I accept good things from God as though it were my right to have them? Maybe not with a conscious thought, but certainly with my lack of gratitude and praise.

Is this perhaps why God created music and gave it the ability to touch our souls and open the wells of our emotions. A song can make me feel happy or sad. It can excite me or lull me to sleep. It can lift my spirits or bring me to my knees. This too is a gift from God. When the wells of our emotions are sealed and it seems we can’t move past our sorrow or fear, find guidance in times of great excitement or encouragement in times of great distress, music has the power to break open those wells, purging us of what we can’t let go of on our own. Songs can take us back or move us forward. But the truly beautiful ones never leave us where we are.

If we are open to it, beautiful music will turn our attention to God’s blessings and fill us with gratitude.

I don’t have an ear for music. No sense of rhythm and as the saying goes, I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. But music still entered into my soul in a way that tells me I couldn’t live without it.

It is interesting that we–even the tone deaf among us like myself–instinctively sing to babies. We don’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance or Newton’s Laws of Motion to soothe them. Now that I think about it though, I think First Law of Motion might well apply to our attempts to calm a fussy baby. An object will not change its motion unless a force acts on it.

Music is a force meant to act upon our hearts.

Mary’s song teaches us that songs of praise are an appropriate response when we are filled with God’s blessings. Even though I didn’t receive the gift of being musical, I am still blessed its beauty.

This Christmas I want to reacquaint myself with the wonder of music, marveling at the power of sound and rhythm to guide my soul to holy ground.