A Magnificent Revelation

And Mary said, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit doth rejoice in God my Savior. (Luke 1:46 & 47)These verses, which are the beginning of "The Magnificat," are among the most familiar ones in the Bible, and yet I have always puzzled over them, wondering how do you "magnify the Lord,"who is God Almighty, the Creator of the universe. He designed it, he made it, and everything in it stemmed from his hand. Therefore, no one and no thing can be greater, or larger, or more powerful than he, so how is it possible to magnify him? Among the dictionary definitions of "to magnify" are included "to make greater," "to increase the size of," and "to enlarge," but clearly, these do not apply in this case.

My great grandmother started a collection of United States postage stamps within a few years following the issue of the first two U.S. stamps in 1847. When she died, my grandmother kept the collection up to date; and when she died, she passed it on to my uncle, who left it to me. I soon discovered that this business of stamp collecting is very much more than just a simple childhood hobby. Indeed, it is a complicated art demanding a high degree of knowledge, skill, and devotion to detail. Very often, a minute difference in design will determine whether a particular stamp is a rarity of great worth, or just another common variety of little value. For example, the different varieties of the 1 cent Franklin design of 1851-1857 range in price from perhaps $30 to as much as $75,000 or more, depending on characteristics not easily discernible to the naked eye, and therefore requiring examination under a magnifying glass, which is one of the first pieces of equipment that even the amateur collector should acquire.

Working on my stamp collection one day, the answer to my puzzling question about the above Bible verses suddenly dawned on me. When I look at a stamp through my magnifying glass, it is only the image of it that is increased. Only the picture of the stamp that is imprinted on my retina, and so is relayed to my brain, is enlarged and made greater, while the actual size of the stamp does not change, but remains the same. Mary is saying that her picture of the Lord, that is the image she has of him in her mind, is greatly magnified. She sees that he is greater than she ever imagined. She sees him more nearly as he actually is, and this revelation fills her whole being with joy.

Our picture of God, and of his son, Jesus Christ, is also way to small. We all need to magnify his image in our minds and hearts. We need to increase the boundaries of how we conceive him to be, and how we think of him. If we do that, and we must if we are to grow spiritually in our understanding and our faith, then his influence in our daily lives and our awareness of his presence will also increase, and our lives will be very different. We need more of Jesus Christ in our lives. Therefore, let us magnify him and rejoice in him, and we will find that as our view of him is increased, our view of our life and of ourselves will also be vastly improved.

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Contributed by Stephen B. Elmer
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