Month: December 2018

“Don’t be afraid, Zechariah! For God has heard your prayer, and your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son!” (Luke 1:13).

Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous people who loved the Lord and longed to hear from Him (Luke 1:6). And they were people who were waiting. Waiting for the promised goodness of God. Waiting for healing. For new life. Waiting for consolation.

I can’t help but wonder if Zechariah and Elizabeth had stopped praying for a child a long time before the angel showed up. Look at Zechariah’s response – “How can I know this will happen? I’m an old man now, and my wife is also well along in years” (Luke 1:18). I can almost hear him say, You’re too late. What I hoped for can’t happen now. God didn’t show up in time.

That’s the thing about faith. It asks us to wait on a promise. It asks us to rely on an invisible God to make the impossible reality. And sometimes that’s a hard thing. Sometimes the wait is so long that we start to believe God’s forgotten, hasn’t heard, or worst of all – doesn’t care.

One of God’s final recorded messages in the Old Testament is found at the end of Malachi, “On the day when I act, they will be my own special treasure. I will spare them as a father spares an obedient and dutiful child… For you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture” (Malachi 3:17, 4:2). God spoke these comforting words, and then there was silence.

Four hundred years of silence. With nothing to hold onto but a promise.

Maybe you’re waiting on a promise. Maybe you’ve been holding on for a very long time and the silence of waiting has been filled with whispers of doubt. Maybe hope has turned to disappointment and it feels like God is too late. Maybe you’re waiting for consolation.

Can I point you back to Zechariah and Elizabeth? Two people who were very old and had probably resigned themselves to childlessness years before they enter the story. God broke His 400 years of silence with these words – “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah!” (Luke 1:13). Don’t be afraid, for God has heard your prayer. He hasn’t forgotten or abandoned you. It’s not too late.

Zechariah and Elizabeth, who were both very old, had a son called John the Baptist. Their “too late” was God’s “at just the right time”.  John set the stage for Jesus, who kicked off His ministry with these words, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me… He has sent me to proclaim that… the time of the Lord’s favor has come” (Luke 4:18-19).

Consolation has come. He came to lessen our grief, to soothe our misery and erase our disappointment. Let Zechariah and Elizabeth reassure you that even though you may have to wait a long time, the answer is coming. It’s not too late.

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and that her sins are pardoned.” Isaiah 40:1-2

My sweet neighbors are from Kentucky. I love visiting with them. No matter what we’re talking about, I’m sure to hear her say, Bless her heart. It’s one of those multi-purpose phrases that can mean so many things. My neighbor always uses it to express sympathy or concern. I’m sure you’ve also heard it with a different inflection, which gives it an entirely different meaning.

I came across this phrase in the Bible the other day. Elizabeth says it when Mary comes to visit her – “In a loud voice she exclaimed: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!” (Luke 1:42 NIV)

We generally consider someone who is blessed to be fortunate, prosperous, happy. Filled with good things. I wonder if Mary felt that way. Mary, an unwed pregnant teenager who didn’t yet know if her fiance would abandon her or her parents would disown her or her community would stone her. Her world had just been turned upside down.

Perhaps these were just the words of encouragement she needed spoken over her. Elizabeth certainly wasn’t being snarky – her words are a glad cry – Blessed are you! There is goodness here, Mary. You are fortunate. Honored. Mary couldn’t yet know how much goodness was inside of her. How much goodness her child was going to bring into the world.

Mary’s baby was Jesus, the Messiah. He was a blessing, healing the sick, forgiving sins, setting free those in spiritual bondage. But on the surface, His life didn’t seem to necessarily be one of great blessing. He spent three years as a homeless wanderer, rejected by His hometown, an embarrassment to His family, before He was arrested, falsely accused and executed.

So I got curious. What does it mean to be blessed? It’s one of those church words that pops up a lot. Surely when my friends say bless your heart it can’t mean the same thing as when Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3).

Turns out the word bless means to make something sacred or holy. It’s a word of goodness, of approval, of happiness. Isn’t this what we long for? Now when I read Elizabeth’s greeting, I see it in a whole new light – Mary, you’re being made holy! Holding onto your trust in God in the face of all these doubts and challenges is refining you.

Holiness isn’t something that we get just by asking. It isn’t a chip we insert or a button we push on the vending machine. It’s the result of the lifelong process of being crafted by God. The imperfect being rubbed away and the goodness, the wholeness, that God designed us for being revealed.

One other interesting thing about the word bless. It’s derived from an old English word for blood, from the use of blood in consecrating things to God. The blood of Mary’s Son is what consecrates us, makes us holy, causes us to be approved by God, fills us with goodness, completes us, gives us great joy. There is no greater blessing.