Luke tells us that upon understanding the significance of the task God gave Mary, her entire soul rejoiced and she burst into praise and prayer. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant,” she exclaimed. (Luke 1:47-48a).
Mary had a great reason for this rejoicing: She was going to give birth to Jesus, the Son of God.
This Christmas season we, too, should rejoice in Jesus. He is king. He is Immanuel. But, perhaps this has been a difficult time for you. There may be circumstances that are crushingly hard to bear. And yet the Lord gives you reason to rejoice even still this season.
The stories we tell during the Christmas holiday about the baby born in a manger are not fairytales. The story of Christmas is a story of God, becoming man, who was born to a a virgin, sent to redeem the world. We can join Mary in rejoicing, not because our circumstances are perfect or even because we can make sense of the troubles we experience. We rejoice because we know that the story doesn’t end with Jesus' birth. We know that Jesus came and fulfilled the promise of a king who would bear our grievances, crush the serpent and one day wipe away all our tears.
My prayer this Christmas season is that the weary world would rejoice. I pray we can join David in Psalm 103 and bless the Lord with all of our soul as Mary did. Let’s remember that Jesus, the son of God, born in a manger, is the King of Kings. He came to redeem us. He came to make right what had gone so wrong in the Garden of Eden. This precious story is all we have and all we need this season to rejoice.
If you are weary, I pray that God would give you remembrance of him to rejoice.