Mary Elizabeth Hall, Author

Tag: John Piper

  • Advent Meditation # 2

    From John Piper’s Good News of Great Joy Daily Advent Readings

    For God’s Little People

    “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus

    that all the world should be registered. This was the first

    registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And

    all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph

    also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to

    Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem,

    because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be

    registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.”

    —Luke 2:1–5

    Have you ever thought what an amazing thing it is that God

    ordained beforehand that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem

    (as the prophecy in Micah 5 shows); and that he so ordained

    things that when the time came, the Messiah’s mother and

    legal father were living in Nazareth; and that in order to fulfill

    his word and bring two little people to Bethlehem that first

    Christmas, God put it in the heart of Caesar Augustus that all

    the Roman world should be enrolled each in his own town?

    Have you ever felt, like me, little and insignificant in a

    world of seven billion people, where all the news is of big political

    and economic and social movements and of outstanding

    people with lots of power and prestige?

    If you have, don’t let that make you disheartened or unhappy.

    “For it is implicit in Scripture that all the mammoth political

    forces and all the giant industrial complexes, without their

    even knowing it, are being guided by God, not for their own

    sake but for the sake of God’s little people—the little Mary and

    the little Joseph who have to be got from Nazareth to Bethlehem.”

    God wields an empire to bless his children.

    Do not think, because you experience adversity, that the

    hand of the Lord is shortened.

    “It is not our prosperity but our

    holiness that he seeks with all his heart.”

    And to that end, he

    rules the whole world. As Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart

    is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever

    he will.”

    He is a big God for little people, and

    “we have great cause to

    rejoice that, unbeknownst to them, all the kings and presidents

    and premiers and chancellors of the world follow the sovereign

    decrees of our Father in heaven, that we, the children, might be

    conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ.”

  • Advent Meditation #1

    From John Piper’s Good News of Great Joy (a free e-book download):

    “Mary and Elizabeth are wonderful heroines in Luke’s

    account. He loves the faith of these women. The thing that

    impresses him most, it appears, and the thing he wants to

    impress on Theophilus, his noble reader, is the lowliness and

    cheerful humility of Elizabeth and Mary.

    Elizabeth says,“Why is this granted to me that the mother of

    my Lord would come to me?” (Luke 1:43). And Mary says, “He

    has looked on the humble estate of his servant” (Luke 1:48).

    The only people whose soul can truly magnify the Lord are

    people like Elizabeth and Mary—people who acknowledge

    their lowly estate and are overwhelmed by the condescension

    of the magnificent God.”