“Hey Mary, I want a song of praise to God, too.”

It wasn’t the easiest time in your life to be singing.

Your Magnificat has been performed all over the world.

Mary’s Song, it’s called. You’d probably find that shocking.

To have your private moment of joy traveling through time.

You were an unmarried pregnant teenager.

In a culture where you were shunned for such a thing.

The angel — and how was that anyway, having Gabriel show up at your house? — announced you’d “found favor with God.”

This tells me you cared about living a life honoring to Him.

Your little town of Nazareth, population 400, must have been stunned when they discovered you were expecting a child.

And how did you explain it? By quoting the angel?

“The power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.”

Somehow I don’t think that went over too well with the town.

In all these centuries since this has been a tough one to try to understand.

Maybe we need to be more like you. You didn’t fully grasp it, either.

But you believed the promise and believed God would bring good from it.

God knew He could entrust His Son to your care.

And so you sang, “My soul exalts the Lord,

And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior….”

We’re not told, but I imagine you sang your way through the entire pregnancy.

Even with the scorn and ridicule you must have endured.

What a grueling journey you made near the end—ninety miles along the Jordan River and across the hills—to Bethlehem.

Most likely walking — although the scene setters like to say you rode a donkey.

I wonder if you thought this Baby would somehow look different.

Surely you didn’t expect to be making His bed in an animal’s feeding trough.

But He was like any other newborn—secretly you must have been relieved.

You and Joseph gave Him the name you were told — Yeshua — Jesus — which means Salvation.

Where was Gabriel? There’s no mention of an angel at the birth.

Might he have been the one standing before the shepherds in the field when the “glory of the Lord shone around them” — saying, “I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people…there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

Good news of great joy! A deliverer. A rescuer. A Savior.

No longer a world without hope.

You made it to this moment Mary, joyfully — and there must have been wonder and excitement as you pondered the future.

There is for me all these years later — because a future with the Son of God is a song longing to be sung.