Behind the story and book of Esther is one of the most fascinating themes that strings all of salvation history on the pages of Scripture together and is perhaps the most illustrative example of God’s sovereign control of it: reversal. An incredible reversal for Esther from a peasant girl to a Queen. An impossibly perfectly-timed reversal for Mordecai who ends up living while his enemy who attempts to kill him, ends up dying, hung on his own gallows that he designed for Mordecai—and Mordecai who goes from a nobody in the king’s courts to taking Haman’s place as second in power/authority to the King.

It’s a total reversal for the Jewish people who rather than getting annihilated by their enemies, end up turning the tables on their enemies and destroying them. And all this through the sovereign, providential control of God, to preserve and protect his people, because of the unconditional promises He made to Abraham and David through a reversal of fortunes that only God can produce!

And that is what we find here as the motivation for Mary’s song of praise as her response to what God has done for her and for her people in history. God is a God of reversals, who inverts and flips human values, situations, and conditions on their head in an unpredictable, mysterious, and timely way, that only He can do.

So Mary praises Him for taking her, a lowly country girl, and giving her the blessing/privilege of birthing and raising the Son of God and Savior of the world, Jesus. She praises Him for the salvation He’ll provide for her and for all His people. She praises Him for humbling the self-righteous, proud, and arrogant, and exalting/saving those who humbly come to him in faith. She praises Him, for His faithfulness to save Israel, His people, and to keep the promise He made to Abraham of a universal blessing, salvation, to people from all over the world. This the story of the first Noel through Mary’s eyes—she responds to the angel’s announcement and news that she has been chosen to bear the Savior of the world with joyful faith and praise.

That, my friends, is the same response that you and I had the moment we first believed—and the same response God calls us to continue in as the pattern of our lives, in gratitude to him, for the awesome salvation that he brings, which first arrived in the form of a precious child, a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, and lying in a manger…