This is reason for joy: the LORD God has entered the world to save sinners from their rebellion and condemnation; to reconcile them to God; to bless them with the light and smile of his countenance. Mary’s blessing and joy rests ultimately not on her bearing her God and Saviour; but on her believing and receiving her God and Saviour for herself. Believing and trusting in the LORD and Saviour is what builds that pier of joy that we want and need. 

Luke 1:39–45 Mary Visits Elizabeth

I don’t want a fix of joy; but its permanent presence.

The tides in King Sound near the town of Derby in far-north-west Australia measure up to twelve metres and are about the biggest in the world.

I watched a skipper anchor his boat there in metres of water. In a few hours the vessel was high and dry and leaning forlornly. The skipper leapt onto the now firm sands and with a large broom scrubbed weed and barnacles from the hull. Not long after, his now clean boat was again bobbing merrily in deep waters.

Not a bad metaphor for the daily rise and fall of our joy.

We buoy ourselves with a pleasant outing to a restaurant, cold beer, laughter with friends, a swim in the ocean, or watching the news on a channel whose bias most pleases us.

But as these pleasant waters recede we come to rest again upon the hard burdens of life – the grind of work and mortgage and power bill, of letdowns, of the consciousness of our own failings, and bodies that age only in one direction. Let alone the existential calamity of death and the pall which it drapes over every facet of our life.

What we need is not an injection of joy, but a reason for joy: the announcement of truths that, if believed and received, will build in the base of one’s soul and convictions a stone pier of joy that will remain immovable no matter what the tides and winds and storms of human existence in a fallen world.

In Luke’s Gospel, Mary and Elizabeth’s meeting is filled with loud greetings, hearty hugs and kisses, in utero leaps, and exuberant blessings. It dances with light and joy. It explains moreover the reasons for the joy. It builds within all who hear and believe these reasons that mighty and immovable pier of joy that our souls crave, and for which we were created.

Luke 1:39–40 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth.

Gabriel has just announced to Mary that she “will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.” As a token of the truth of this he tells that “Elizabeth your relative [συγγενης, syngenēs, not necessarily her cousin] is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month.”

The moment the angel leaves, Mary “gets up” – it is indeed the first word in verse 39 – and rushes from Nazareth to “a town in the hill country of Judea”,  a rustic region to the south of Jerusalem and a long four-day journey from Nazareth.

Mary hastens to Elizabeth to have her faith strengthened by God’s confirmation of the far greater thing that he was to do within her. She hastens also, as Matthew Henry surmises, “to talk over a thing she had a thousand time thought over”, to open her heart with the only other person on earth who was living through something of what she was experiencing. And she hastens, as Calvin noted, “to show forth on all sides the grace she had received from God.”

By the time Mary arrives at Elizabeth’s house she is pregnant with Jesus. Mary enters with a greeting – the original word implies kissing and embracing – and we can easily picture the joy of this moment.

Luke 1:41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.

From sixteen weeks’ gestation unborn babies hear their mother’s breathing, heartbeat, and tummy rumbling.

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