“My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” These are the first words of what we call The Magnificat – a [poem or song of praise and Thanksgiving.  They were recited by Mary, the mother of Jesus, when her cousin Elizabeth met her at the door and confirmed that she knew of the coming birth of Mary’s child.

To magnify means to enlarge or make greater than the apparent size.  It also can mean to dramatize. When I use a magnifying glass I make things more readable. I place the magnifying glass over what I want to read and I am able to bring the desired passage into focus.  That doesn’t change the rest of the words on the page, it just brings what I want to see closer.

We have many things going on in our lives.  So many that it sometimes seems overwhelming.  But we can place our focus on one thing at a time. We choose what we want to magnify. We live in a universe of infinite possibilities. Every day we must choose which of those possibilities we want to magnify… which we want to see more clearly, which we want to dramatize.

Often in the past I have chosen to enlarge or dramatize those things that I did not want to focus on. Instead of the many, many things that are going right I had allowed myself to dwell on that which didn’t seem to be going right.   The result was that the things that were going right became the background.  The thing I didn’t want to increase I magnified. 

Metaphysically “The Lord” represents the spiritual dimension of us.  When we can remember to magnify, enlarge, even dramatize that spiritual part of ourselves our lives can become more productive and more joyful.

We all have within us the knowledge that we are made in the image of God.  We have access to all the wisdom, abundance and wholeness that is our true nature.  It is most important to focus on this during this season. By enlarging and dramatizing the knowledge of the reality of the Christ presence being born and reborn in us, we are “magnifying the Lord.” Let us make a conscious effort to affirm that reality in everything we thing, say and do.  And let us, as Mary and Elizabeth did, remind each other.   #

We are reminded every year of all the things for which we are so thankful, for all of the many major blessings in our lives. This year I have been made aware, again and again, of all the little things that I have experienced that have made my life much easier.

From April to September my family and I were busy getting our house ready to sell, selling the house, arranging for storage and finding another place to live- along with all the little, and sometimes big, challenges associated with a move.

It seems from the first we were guided to the right people to help us in this endeavor.  A great couple came to take down wallpaper.  It turned out they were members of our local Unity Chapel.  A real estate agent became our angel in disguise.  He guided us, supported us and led us through what could have become a difficult transaction.

From the beginning of the experience I was able to have so many “God’s little Burma Shave signs” (those of you of a certain age can recall these- little signs that kept you waiting for the next one!)  I should have documented them all.

And now that we are settled, well almost completely, I took the time to revisit Bandon, Oregon where I had my first experience as a minister in a Unity Church. It was a rewarding time. I renewed acquaintances, met new people and had a time to enjoy the beautiful Ocean beach and a renewal of body and soul. I had so many “little” Burma Shave signs as I drove that I lost count all the way to Oregon and then returning home.

So I am grateful for the people in my life, the work that I feel I am called to continue to do and the promise that, in the words of Daniel Nahmod’s song, God’s infinite love is “more than enough.”

On the whole world stage, in spite of how events are happening around us now, there is more than enough wisdom, resources of all kinds, and certainly more than enough infinite love to sustain us through what seems to be a discouraging time. So let us step back, see things in the long term and acknowledge how greatly humankind has been blessed over the ages and how far we have come. We can trust the process that has brought us this far and can continue to see that infinite love is still at work in our own lives and in the world. 

While in Unity of Louisville, KY and Unity of Montclair NJ last week I had the opportunity to talk about our changing perception of God.  I told the story, that so many of us know, about the little girl who was enthusiastically drawing with crayons on paper.  When her mother asked her what she was drawing she replied that she was drawing a picture of God.  Her mother told her what most any mother would have done, that no one knew what God looked like.  We probably know the little girl's reply.   It was an enthusiastic "They will now!"

And just like the little girl, we as humankind have continued to try to draw our pictures of what we believe the divine "looks like."  We have moved away from believing there were many gods and goddesses and that these gods and goddesses were petty, jealous and often changed their minds.  We went to the idea of a warrior God who fought for us against the many people  we perceived as enemies.  Then we moved to the notion of a god of law and order and eventually of justice.  We moved from a god of conditional love to one of unconditional love.

Often we have insisted that our picture was the only right one and have spent energy, time, money and for some their very life, trying to impose our pictures on everyone else.

There have always been a few people, however, who saw that there was more than one way to picture God (by whatever name we call it).  These people throughout the ages have been the ones who have been seeding higher forms of consciousness and the fruits of those seeds have continued to grow.  Today, though it appears otherwise when we look at the small picture, we have more people who have let go of the need to impose our beliefs on everyone else.  Because of those who have seen beyond what others have seen, we have let go of the idea of a God out there somewhere, separate from humanity as a whole and individuals. Many of us have embraced the idea of the divine within.

From our present place we can glimpse on the horizon what we are seeing as Oneness.  We can grasp the idea that it is all God.  We can glimpse it in moments of inspiration, we can grasp it for moments of ecstasy and little by little embody it.  But let us not forget that it is our present picture and what we may understand in the future is beyond our present imagination. The New Testament writers had such a glimpse.  Couched in the understanding of these writers' own perception of God is the glimpse of what is yet to come.

2 Corinthians 3:18 And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another

1 John 3:2 Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he* is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.