musings, past and present

My little brother agreed to accompany me to work this afternoon, where we managed to deliver the final 8 leftover Salvation Army meals, completing the deliver of their 81 donated dinners. It was a fine way to spend a Christmas Day, for sure--nicely rounding out a few days of family gatherings, gift exchanges, carol singings, and devotional readings. As I am still behind in a sewing project, and have not devoted time to writing over this holiday season, I decided to re-post a piece I wrote several years ago . . . "the magnificat," i called it:

Holy. Holy. Holy is the Lord. The familiar catch of breath. The sting in the eyes. And the tears begin to flow with the falling rain. Or do the tears fall with the flowing rain. What is it in these words that I whisper that wrenches at my heart so? Why does Mary’s prayer touch the core of my being, so many centuries after it was spoken?
I think it must be because I know that she was just a girl, just a human being, with a woman’s heart like my own. And so, when I hear her wondering words, I can feel with her the emotion she must have felt. To bear the son of God—what wondrous mystery, what glorious honour! And she was, like me, just a young woman—much younger, in fact, than I am now. And so, no matter how often I hear the story and read her words, it still has the power to bring abrupt and unsought tears.
What a gracious God, to work wonders with such frail and faulty creatures as us!