Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Week Three, Day Four

Yesterday, we saw how Mary’s song shows us the way God works in human life. God comes to and blesses those of low estate. Today’s verses expand that theme. The proud are scattered by God’s strong arm. (vs. 51).  God has toppled the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. (vs. 52)  The hunger of the poor is fed and the rich are sent away empty. (vs. 53)  Fred Craddock points out that all the verbs are in the past tense.   Thus, what the song is describing is accomplished fact.

But I believe before any of us can accept the truth this song reveals, we need to ask the unavoidable question our world lays on our hearts. Is this song true? I believe we only see its truth when our world is turned upside down… I mean really turned upside down to the point where we are brought to a despair in which we  then experience a surprising embracing of the divine truth in Mary’s song.

 In her doctoral dissertation, the late Rev. Dr. Lee Morical gives an honest and beautiful account of what happened to her when her world was turned upside down. Lee was an ordained United Church of Christ pastor and a popular professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. She was a sought after speaker and published author.  She was a rising star in her field, as well as happily married. Her world turned on its head when her husband was diagnosed with inoperable cancer and given only a year to live. Months later her own cancer, long in remission, came back in a virulent form. It forced her to give up all that her world was offering her.  

When she hit the bottom side of her world, she found that “Forced to sit down in the back of the boat, because I no longer had the legs to stand, I learned that it is not in the getting and “having it all” but in “letting go” that we begin to find the “peace which passes all understanding.”

And it is only when we realize that life has no safety nets – never had, never will – that we begin to know that ‘out of God’s love we cannot  fall.’  Forced to sit down and shut up because I no longer had the strength to speak, I received the gifts that come only when we sit with God in the silence and listen.  And wait.”

When God meets us in the bottom place of our world as God met Lee Morical, the world’s promises and allures come up wanting while Mary’s words ring as profoundly true. Just as Jesus showed us long ago, it is in the desert places we see the truth about God, the world, and ourselves. It is in the desert places, when we maintain our faith in God, we see the world’s promises of material abundance, power, and prestige tumble away before the divine love from which we cannot fall.

Going to a Third World Nation is a way for many of us to find the divine truth that lives in the wilderness. Rev. Elizabeth Canham  in Weavings (Sept./Oct., 2004 issue, pp.19-26)  describes what God showed her on a recent trip to Egypt. She found it to be a judgment on her affluent life style and a call to change to ways that would connect her more with the lives of the poor. She writes “When we toured a monastery in the morning, I was challenged by the utter simplicity of life of the monks and the deep contentment that radiated from their faces…” She then recalled Bible verses she learned as a child: “Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for (God) has said , ‘I will never leave or forsake you.’  So we can say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?’ Fasting from discontent is (now for me) an ever growing challenge.”

Canham also advocates our fasting from consumerism and our world of privilege.  Yes, it is through our letting go of what binds and blinds us and letting in God’s love that we will see just how true Mary’s song is!

Prayer: God we thank you for the divine truth that comes to us in poetry, song, and holy silence. Guide us to always be humble of heart and open to the mercy that brings wholeness and holiness to our lives. Amen.