What Mary Knows About God

Dr. Amy Orr Ewing Shows How the Almighty is the One Who Is Also For Me

I’ve been loving this new Advent devotional from Dr. Amy Orr Ewing! It’s a sustained reflection on the Magnificat, Mary’s song. As Amy points out early in the book, “Women's voices in history are rarely heard. Yet here we have Mary's eyewitness testimony included in a broader account, alongside her actual words. Mary's voice matters.” In fact, “The words of the Magnificat that follow form the longest speech of any woman in the New Testament.”

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One of the more remarkable themes in Mary’s song is the juxtaposition of Go'd’s might and God’s mercy. Below are Amy’s excellent reflections found in a few excerpts from the entry on December 8th:

“Mary reminds us in this sentence that God is ‘The Mighty One’ and that ‘he has done great things for me.’ The great theological and philosophical truth that God is transcendent and that he is mighty is coupled together with ‘he has done great things for me.’ That same almighty and all-powerful God is also personal since he has looked upon me ‘he has done great things for me.’ Mary, the teenage girl from Nazareth, captures something deeply profound in this sentence about the transcendence and immanence of God. She proclaims that God is the Mighty One, sovereign over all —over creation, over the material world, over time and space, over reason and emotion, over history, over rulers and systems— and he has done something beautiful for me.

This is the first attribute of God that Mary explores and speaks of in the Magnificat-God's might and power. He is the mighty God, ho dunatos in Greek. Mary's God was God Almighty, the Creator of the ends of the earth. There is no One mightier than her God. He alone is able, and with God nothing is impossible. It is clear again that Mary knew the Old Testament scriptures, and how much they shape her song. God himself spoke of this aspect of his character to Abraham in Genesis 17:1 where he is revealed as El Shaddai. The Lord Almighty. God Almighty is a name for God given forty-eight times in the Old Testament…”

What does it mean to refer to God as “Almighty”? Is it simply a statement about authority and might? The language and the context of the Old Testament give more texture to the picture:

“God as Almighty is called El Shaddai in the Old Testament scriptures, and his power and might are contrasted with the idols of the nations who in Hebrew are called sheddim. They are dependent on their worshippers since those idols are created by humans, either by our minds or by our hands. Sheddim means they are not self-sustaining. But God Almighty, El Shaddai, is by contrast all sufficient-he is not in need of therapy from humanity and he is not a figment of our minds or something made for our convenience. He is Almighty and entirely sovereign over all things visible or invisible, powers, ages, objects, or systems. But Shaddai also carries the root word for ‘of the bosom of the mother’; El Shaddai is an extraordinarily intimate kind of Almightyness. Just as we are nursed and fed the milk of our human mothers, so we need to be sustained and nurtured by the one who is utterly Almighty. In the storms of life he is mighty and powerful, but he also is tender and nurturing as a mother with a baby. Mary speaks of God as Almighty and all powerful, and this is resonant with the Lord Almighty, El Shaddai.

The power and majesty of Almighty God will be revealed through Christ. In Matthew 19:26 Jesus Christ says, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’ The apostle Paul recognized this too and wrote in Ephesians 3:20, ‘Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.’ Mary adds her voice to these: ‘for the Mighty One has done great things for me.’

Here, Mary holds together these two theological thoughts.

God is the Mighty one who is transcendent and holy and glorious and magnificent beyond our wildest imaginations. He is the source of philosophical and theological, metaphysical truth and reality, and he is the creator of material creation. He is the powerful and mighty Lord of all. And it is he who has done great things for me.

She brings together this transcendent, marvelous, wonderful God with the one who actually interacts with you and me in space and time in history. She brings together the transcendence and the immanence of God. Isn't that exactly what we see in the incarnation? We see the transcendent Creator God, becoming immanent, drawing close, taking on human flesh coming to dwell among us. Mary grasps this tenderness of God, and like a psalmist, or a prophet of old, she extols God with these wonderful theological truths: ‘My soul glorifies and magnifies the Lord— the Mighty One has done great things for me.’ ”

How often do we think of God’s might as distant and removed? How easily do we picture God either as tender or as strong? Yet Mary holds together God’s might and God’s mercy. She knows that if God were for us but God were weak, that would not be good news. And if God were strong but indifferent toward us, it would still fail to be good news. But God is the Almighty and He is for me!

“Perhaps like Mary today we might think about and give thanks for the specific and wonderful things the Lord the Mighty One has done for us in our lives. But before we jump to making lists of things he has done, for which we are thankful, dwell for a moment on the tenderness of Almighty God, his love for you personally and his desire to interact with you, to carry and strengthen you even in times of great turmoil and difficulty.”

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Amy preached at Rockharbor a few Sundays ago on Mary’s voice. You can listen to her message here.