Perhaps you've wondered about this, perhaps not: how did Mary, who, as far as we know, was uneducated and perhaps even illiterate, compose this beautiful song we now call the Magnificat (from the Latin of the first word, which means praise)? It's a fair question, and some have speculated that Luke used an early Christian hymn here.

Remember, however, that even uneducated people had a phenomenal oral recall in those days, and the argument could be made that anyone familiar with the literary and poetic form of the psalms, as Mary would have been, could have composed such a psalm in her mind. It's also clear that Mary's material is very similar in subject to Hannah's song in 1 Samuel 2:1. It might not, then, have been all that unlikely for Mary to have been able to compose this exquisite psalm and recite it to others, even years later.

Studying this song, we can easily realize why it came to be so treasured by the church over time. It gives us some inkling of what it must have felt like for this young girl to be chosen by God to be the mother of our Lord: "From now on all generations will call me blessed." Blessed indeed! Yet her attention is fixed like a laser on the goodness of God rather than on her own blessedness. "His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation."

But the heart of Mary's song comes in the central stanzas. Here she sings not only of her own blessedness but of the blessedness of all lowly and powerless people. We often feel tiny and powerless too in the face of the rich and famous, the powerful, and those who rule. They run things, after all; to some extent they may even control our destiny.

No, insists Mary. God is in control, and God has the power to "scatter those who are proud," and "bring down the rulers from their thrones. . . ." Not only that, but God is truly the one who turns the natural order of things upside down. He not only brings down rulers but "has lifted up the humble." "He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty."

This is revolutionary stuff! It means that while God establishes rulers, he can also cast them down if they do not deal justly. It also means that God's heart is weighted toward the poor and the lowly. He has special regard for their plight. Mary, this young girl, and her son Jesus are prime examples of what she sings. They have turned the world upside down.

And Mary sings of all this in the light of God's covenant. This is not some sudden act of God, she reminds us, but the result of God's promises "to Abraham and his descendants forever."

Christmas focuses the hopes of the world on the birth of this one baby. This hope in the coming child of promise was a tradition that had already begun with Abraham, who received the first promise, followed by many more "children of promise": Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, David, and others. In each of these instances the blessing of God came through the birth of a child who would bring about good things. Jesus is the final, the crowning, child of promise---Christ the Lord, God with us!