Seen by God: Living in God's Future Now

The answer is simple, but it's also very staggering. She speaks this way because the future has already entered the present. The Messiah has already been conceived in her womb. God's saving work has already begun. Mary is not ignoring reality. She's not delusional. She's interpreting it from a deeper truth that she knows exists. She sees the present in light of God's future because God's future is already growing inside of her literally. [00:49:26] (34 seconds)  #FutureIsHere

And history suggests that Mary's song has always been heard this way, not as a harmless prayer or devotion and comfort, but as something very dangerous. The magnificat, this is the that's the name the Latin name for this, for Mary's song. It's not just a devotional song of worship. It is a threat to unjust power. In the twentieth century alone, repressive regimes in India, in Argentina, and Guatemala have all treated the magnificat as a threat rather than a devotion. [00:57:35] (34 seconds)  #SongOfResistance

Anyone who's waited for a child understands this kind of hope. Parent, grandparent, caregiver, uncle, aunt, sibling, once life has begun in the womb, everything quietly begins to reorganize in your life even though nothing is finished yet. You begin to imagine names. You begin to make room in your home. You prepare a place that no one has seen yet even if you haven't announced it to anyone else. You begin to think of supplies you need to buy. You plan your days differently. You you carry the future differently in your present day. [00:55:52] (34 seconds)  #CarryingTheFuture

For listening carefully here, we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but something feels strange. Mary does not say, God will. She doesn't say, someday, God will do this. She speaks in the past tense. In the original Greek, this tense is a completed action, a one time completed action, a settled reality. He has scattered. He has brought down. He has filled the hungry, Which brings the question, how does she speak this way when nothing appears to have changed in her in her world? [00:48:47] (39 seconds)  #AlreadyDone

Mary's song has endured not because it offers an escape from the world, but because it teaches us how to live faithfully in it when God's future has already broken in to the present. That's what it means to live with hope in light of Christ's arrival. That's not naive optimism. It's not denying that there are things wrong in the world. It's not confidence that in that song, everything's gonna be alright. It's because Christ has come. [00:56:55] (32 seconds)  #HopeInChrist

Transformation and encountering God doesn't begin with getting attention. It begins with paying attention. And we've been asking what happens when we stop rushing past God and discover that God has been watching us, looking towards us in love all along. And today's text takes us a step further because it's one thing to know that we are seen by God, but it's another thing to learn how that being seen changes the way that we see the world. [00:40:12] (31 seconds)  #SeenChangesSight

In colonial context, in military dictatorships, in places where the poor were kept in their place, Mary's words were discouraged. They were censored. They were suppressed by those in power against those who chose to sing it. Not because they taught people violence, but they taught people how to see that the powerful are not permanent, and the poor are not forgotten, and history does not belong to those who believe they control it. That's what this song says. [00:58:09] (32 seconds)  #PowerIsProvisional

And that's where Mary's song takes on even more depth because Mary doesn't just believe that God will act someday. She carries evidence of that reality within her own body. When Mary speaks in the past tense about justice, about the proud being scattered, about the hungry being filled, she isn't just imagining a better future. She's responding to a reality that has already begun. [00:55:27] (25 seconds)  #IncarnateJustice