Have Yourself a Mary Little Christmas-1 - Sunday December 09, 2012
My soul magnifies the Lord. Luke 1:46 ESV
At this time of year, it is so easy for me to get distracted by the hoopla of the season-preparations, decorations, and celebrations. I'm trying to avoid distraction by focusing my mind on studying the story of that first Christmas.
Lately I have been looking at the life of Mary. I love the word picture that comes from Mary's song in the above verse. To "magnify" something means to make it bigger than everything else around it. At Christmas we desperately need to magnify Jesus. He is bigger than Black Friday or the ten holiday events on our schedule.
Webster also defines magnify as "to make more exciting; intensify." Jesus is definitely more exciting than decorating the tree or opening gifts on Christmas morning. Sometimes I lose track of that! He can become lost in our eagerness to uphold traditions like baking cookies or watching our favorite holiday movies on television-fun things, but things that might not have much to do with the Savior's birth.
The opposite of magnify is to diminish, and, sadly, that is what we tend to do with Christ during the holiday season. What becomes enlarged are our worries over money, stress caused by busyness, and unmet expectations. Let's make it our goal to be like Mary this year and to magnify the Savior more than all the things that threaten to steal His glory.
Submitted by:
Kelly Lewis
Grace Point Community Church
Lewis Center, Ohio
One-Year Reading Plan:
Joel 1:1-3:21
Revelation 1:1-20
Psalms 128:1-6
Proverbs 29:18
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