As part of the printed booklet of song words for the Mount Gambier City Blue Lake Carols a devotion is included on behalf of the local Minister’s Association.
I wrote this year’s one.
Here it is:
The first person who celebrated the birth of Jesus in song was his own mother. Luke’s Gospel retells a story that Christians believe was told to Luke by Mary herself. After all, she was the only one there!
That first celebration was not only an anticipation of the birth that would take place nine months later near a manger in Bethlehem. Mary composed and sang a song of praise that expressed faith and joy in God’s love and saving power. Decades later the words of that song were still etched in Mary’s mind, and they still declared the hope that filled her heart.
Before their births, all parents have great hopes for our children as we dream of what their lives may be. Mary’s song was not just a romantic aspiration, however. She was not shut away from the realities of life. Her people were under foreign rule. She was engaged to be married to an honourable man who would struggle to understand her pregnancy. There was the danger that she would become a marginalised person among a marginalised people.
Yet she hears the words and believes that more than the blessing of motherhood, there is the blessing of a merciful God who would fulfil a promise of blessing for all the nations. God had long promised to bring the marginalised and powerless to himself. And her son, Jesus, would be the way he would do it.
The words of the carols we sing, the observance of Christmas on December 25; these speak of a destiny that is so wonderful that amidst the cares and limitations of life we can scarcely believe they are for us. We might feel that these words mock us with hope, so great is their promise in contrast to our present experience.
Years later Mary would feel the greatest pain a parent can experience, watching the cruel death of her son. Yet her song was not in vain. The resurrection demonstrated the power of God’s love over death.
The great truth of the carols we sing tonight and through the Christmas season is not that we can find God, but that God in his power, love and mercy has come to find us in the person of Jesus Christ.
The song that started in his mother’s throat rings down through the ages and people of faith and hope continue to sing his praise.
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