This past week, a group of my friends had a conversation about what we want. That was the straightforward question – what do you want. It is a common one this time of year, usually as an invitation to supply a gift list. But this group went a little deeper. 

None of the things we wanted were things we could really give each other. 

Some wanted better jobs, others just any job at all.
A couple of friends wanted holidays uninterrupted by relatives in the throes of addiction.
One wanted her hair to grow back after cancer treatment.
I will confess that my wish was to be able to get to and from work without passing a roadwork zone. 

However the most common want was for peace. Over and over people lifted this up as the one want they had above all others. 
Peace of mind.
Peace in families.
Community, national, and world peace.

Above their other wants was a desire for other people – all people – to have safety, health, shelter, enough food to eat. A desire for less anxiety, danger, and stress. A longing for more respect, and love. 

These sound like the same wants I hear most years. Certainly, the longing for peace bites a little more this year with multiple wars raging. But I frankly don’t remember a year when there was so much peace that people didn’t feel a need to ask for more. On one hand I am moved that so many long for peace, and on the other hand disappointed that we never seem to get it. 

That longing for peace goes back before I can remember. To my parents, grandparents, all my ancestors. All the way back to people who have been kidnapped and held captive during war, and to them the prophet Isaiah proclaimed,
Liberty to the captives
Release of prisoners
Gladness instead of mourning

Those things were at the top of their list of wants, and could easily be a list for today. This desire, this want, spans generations. Perhaps it is part of what makes us human – both that we create the devastation and then we yearn for its repair. 

Seven hundred years after Isaiah’s proclamation, a young pregnant Mary made her own proclamation of good news to the oppressed and the brokenhearted. Speaking from her lowly status, she announced that, all appearances to the contrary, she was blessed. Like 90% of the people around her, she was very poor. She was a disgraced pregnant girl. Being humble and meek was not a choice for her, it was a status imposed by the powers that be. 

And yet, like Isaiah, whose words she surely had heard all her life, she rejoiced in what God had done and was doing in her life. And not just in her life. From her remote village, Mary spoke to a longing for peace going back and forward through generations and across borders to the nations of the world. 

Living daily in Roman occupied territory, she sang about the leveling of oppressed and oppressor, of powerful and powerless. Where did her audacity come from? How could she translate the small injustices in her own life into the larger brutalities of people she’d never seen or heard of?

She was able to see God acting in her life and the life of people around her when most would see no evidence. She was able to connect what she experienced in her own life with the promises God made to her ancestors – and she trusted that those promises will carry forward into the future. 

She saw all this in her life of struggle. And she saw them not in a distant, dreamy future. She sang about the redemption God brings here on earth. Mary’s song lauds the God who not only saves souls, but also saves embodied people. Redemption begins here on earth – filling the hungry, dethroning the mighty. 

And her song is not saying that good things WILL happen, but that they HAVE happened. 

Most of us have objectively much easier lives than she did; why should we complain? Yet at our core, our wants have remained remarkably similar. And our sorrows are every bit as valid as hers or anyone’s. 
Like Mary, we still see a need for mercy. 
Like her we still see the benefit of scattering the proud and lifting up the lowly. 
Like her we want on behalf of others. 
And maybe like her, we can be inspired by the promise God made to our ancestors and see hope around us even in the midst of our hardships. 

There is hope in our struggle for financial security, in our search for healing from diseases of the mind and body. There is hope that hair will grow back and injuries will heal. There is hope, even, that war will cease. Advent is a reminder that we can join Mary in seeing God working in our lives right now. In unexpected ways. As unexpected as a baby given to us as a savior. As unexpected as mercy and justice in a harsh and unbalanced world. 

As unexpected as a song from a poor, disgraced, small-town girl that rejoices in the forever promise that belongs to all of us. 

Mary’s Song (Luke 1:46-55)
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.
    Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name;
indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the imagination 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 come to the aid of his child Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
    to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”