“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