MAGNIFY THE LORD

Bill Murphy  October, 2020

And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord. Luke 1:46 (KJV)

For as long as I can remember, that small verse has intrigued me.  And like Mary said in Luke 2:19 about something that affected her, I kept this word ‘magnify’ close to me and pondered it in my heart.  Deep down I felt that there surely could be a deeper meaning here than at first we might suppose.

Words themselves are tools, tools which depict or portray meaning and understanding.  The incorrect ‘tool’ can portray incorrect understanding.

Love is affection, correct?  When our mate says, “I love you,” what if we respond with “I have affection for you too.” Chances are that would go over like a lead balloon!  

So, what does ‘magnify’ really mean?  

The New Living Translation says, my soul praises the Lord.  Magnify = Praise.  Praise = Magnify.  But, can it possibly be that magnify means something even more meaningful and deeper?  Perhaps it does.

The word magnify means to intensify, boost, amplify, enlarge, increase, enhance, expand, or to   augment something.  Onstage musicians use ‘amps’ to amplify the sound so that it will carry farther.  Amplifiers intensify the sound that the individual instruments and singers are capable of making on their own.

But wait!  We’re talking about our souls (and Mary’s) magnifying the Lord!  It’s utterly impossible for us to ‘increase’ our Lord God Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth!  

Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap;  which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?  And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?  If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest? Luke 12:24-26  (KJV)

Consider that big black box on stage, the Amp.  The amp doesn’t increase the original sound.  It doesn’t make the guitar itself louder… it takes the sound which originated with the guitar, and augments the sound, making this ‘second generation’ of sound louder than the original.

Now consider the magnifying glass.  It can never make the actual object larger.  It only makes the image of the object larger.  The original object is left unchanged… and now we see an enhanced and enlarged image of that object!

What does the Bible tell us about God and that word image?

So God created man in his own image,  in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Genesis 1:27. (KJV)

Wow!  I could stop right here.  That one verse explains it all!  

We can never ‘increase’ God!  We can’t add anything to Him.  But, because we are made ‘in His image,’ we are very capable of magnifying the image of Him that others see in us every day.  

Yes, this is most likely a different way of looking at the scriptural word magnify and what it can be interrupted to mean.  But truthfully, when we love Him more and more, and when we worship and praise Him more and more, and when we devote ourself to Him more and more… are not we striving to draw closer and closer to Him, and striving to become more and more like Him?

But how far can we go along this path toward being Holy like God is Holy?  The Apostle Peter gives us a clue in the fourteenth chapter of the the first book of Peter:

As obedient children do not conduct yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance.  But as He who has called you is holy, so be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:14-16

David tells us in Psalms how to both praise and magnify the Lord…

I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving. Psalm 69:30 (KJV)

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WHY AM I SO NUTS OVER AIRPLANES?

Bill Murphy  ~  October 2020

The simple answer is that we were raise together.  

Our home in south Jackson, Mississippi was three miles from Hawkins Field, the home to Jackson’s Municipal Airport and the US Army Airforce’s ‘temporary’ AAF Base.  The landing pattern for Delta and Southern Airlines DC-3s was directly over our home.

I was born in early 1941, so my formative years were those hectic and heady days of WWII.  Dutch flyers of the Royal Netherlands Military Flying School were trained there, so the skies over our home witnesses a steady stream of both military and civilian aircraft… mostly all in low-level flight.

An older first cousin lived next door, and when he shipped off to basic training and then to Europe, he left in my ‘safe keeping’ a Comet stick and tissue model that he’d begun.  He promised to complete the model when he returned from the war.  Yes, he survived and returned home safely… but the poor model hadn’t survived my constant ‘viewing.’

The first model that I can remember was a paper model, purchased from a local five and dime.  As for toy planes, it seems that during the war every fighter was a P-40, and every bomber was an A-20 or similar to it.  And yes, I also had a metal pedal-plane.  As you can see from the photo, it too was very P-40ish.  I remember it as being red.  Strange.

One of my favorite plastic toys later on after the war was an early jet fighter… an F-84 Thunderjet made into a water pistol!  It fired (un-scale-like) through the nose.  It was great fun to strafe ants and spiders and the little girls down the street.

My first balsa model was a 10c solid model kit.  I quickly learned the do’s and don’ts of cutting balsa with a razor blade when I sliced through my bluejeans and into my leg.  One’s thigh does not serve well as a cutting board!

Aurora began producing plastic kits in the mid 50s.  One that I remember distinctly was their FW-190.  The year that kit came out, I received no less than THREE of them for my birthday, from different relatives.  Oh well.

I build plastic kits, although in my later years I’ve had to forgo 1/72nd scale due to my older eyes.  I build balsa models, stick and tissue, rubber and small gas/electric power.  I much prefer scale, golden age civilian, WWII, a few WWI types, oh, and the earlier jets.  For many years I’ve downloaded plans from the internet, well sorted and all on a bag full of flash-drives.  If I built a model from those plans every minute, beginning from my birth, I’d still be building!  We won’t talk about my library!  Oh yeah, I like boats and trains too!

TRAPPED!

Bill Murphy,  October 2020

Have you ever been trapped?  I don’t mean trapped for two hours at a piano recital for your neighbor’s six year old wannabe Beethoven.  I’m mean trapped in what could have been a life or death situation, or at least it seemed that way at the time?

I was once trapped in the McCarty-Holman Warehouse elevator with Henry Holman for a few minutes.  But curious as I am, I’d previously done my homework and discovered the release mechanism that allowed us to escape. 

But many years before that great elevator entrapment, my childhood pal, John Gorday and I were trapped in quicksand-like mudd in town creek.

This was in the early to mid 50s.  We were both raised on Evergreen, two blocks north of Battlefield Park.  In the late 40s, the land south of Hwy 80 was mostly undeveloped and wild.  That area might as well have been on another continent!  It became our ‘Amazon Forest’ within walking distance of home.  We’d cut through Battlefield Park between Terry Road and Gallatin… and quickly be in an explorers paradise. Town Creek was our ‘Amazon.’

It had rained previously, and obviously for many days.  The lazy creek had been out of it’s banks, but had now receeded to normal level.  We spied something sticking up from the water, something interesting.

The creek itself was not wide at all in this area, hardly more than four or five feet at most… and shallow.  Wading out to inspect this curious object would be simple, or so we thought!

I can’t remember which brave soul ventured out first, but a few steps beyond dry ground, and still several feet from the water’s edge, we discovered that we were in serious trouble!  The banks were muddy, very muddy, with very deep and sticky mud! The mud was like quicksand with a mega-grip. The photo above does NOT do it justice! We were stuck almost up to our knees!

The one on the bank ventured out as far as they could reach and grabbed a hand of the trapped one and pulled.  Although the one stuck was pulled close enough to the bank to gain enough traction to struggle out of the mud, the ‘rescuer’ was pulled out into the stickly mud!  We’d only switched places!  

This see-saw, back and forth, the rescuer becoming the one needing rescue, went on and on for what seemed like hours!  Back and forth we went until we were exhausted.  But we carried on, inching ever closer and closer to dry ground.

Finally, two very muddy and very tired Amazon explorers lay spent on the backs of the Mighty Muddy Town Creek.  It was time to break camp and head back to Doodleville.