Stress Test Devotional May 18
May 18, 2024
LUKE 1:51-54 | He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy.
Mary’s hope also rests on her imagination. Imagination is one of God’s most powerful gifts. Without it the world cannot be changed, except by accident. Without it the status quo remains forever as the only possible state of affairs. Mary has a particularly powerful and revolutionary imagination. She can see a world overflowing with God’s dramatic action, in which the proud are disoriented, the powerful unseated, and the rich empty. She imagines the lowly lifted and the hungry filled. Mary anticipates a world where Israel’s fortunes are radically changed. Here in a few verses there is a new social reality and a new international order. These are pretty big dreams for a young teenage girl, pretty huge hopes for a world where change can seem glacial and the current powers immovable.
Imagination feeds our prayer life. It is the way we envision what we mean when we say “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Imagination is also easily filled with vain things or even evil images and must be guarded carefully.
Do you exercise your imagination in prayer?
What sort of changes can you imagine in our world?
What would God say about the way you use your imagination?
