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Week Seven— Giving up on Unanswered Prayers
Luke 1
In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named
Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of
Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God,
walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they
had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
Now while he was he was serving as priest before God when his division was on
duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter
the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people
were praying outside at the hour of incense. And there appeared to him an angel
of the Lord standing on the right side of the alter of incense.
And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon
him. But the angel said unto him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer
has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call
his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his
birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink strong wine
or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his
mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord
their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn
the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of
the just, to make ready for the Lord, a people prepared.
And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am
an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” And the angel answered him, “I
am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and
to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak
until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my
words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”
And the people were waiting for Zechariah, and they were wondering
at his delay in the temple. And when he came out, he was unable to speak to
them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple. And he kept
making signs to them and remained mute. And when his time of service was ended,
he went to his home. After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for
five months she kept herself hidden, saying, “Thus the Lord has done for me in
the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people….”
Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son.
And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to
her, and they rejoiced with her. And on the eighth day they came to circumcise
the child. And they would have called him Zechariah after his father, but his
mother answered, “No; he shall be called John.” And they said to her, “None of
your relatives is called by this name.” And they made signs to his father, inquiring
what he wanted him to be called. And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote,
“His name is John.” And they all wondered. And immediately his mouth was opened
and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God. And fear came on all their
neighbors. And all these things were talked about through all the hill country
of Judea, and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, “What
then will this child be?” For the hand of the Lord was with him. (ESV).
This is a story of lost hope. These two godly
people had waited on God and prayed for years for a child. At some point, they
lost hope. It was too late. The window on having babies closed and they
silently held their quiet sadness like the baby they never had. The comfort
between them was shared grief and a common faith in a God that they knew had
been faithful to His people. Doing his daily duties gave Zechariah a kind of
ritual comfort that even if he hadn’t been heard in his personal prayers, God
would hear his prayers for his people.
It was a particular honor to be chosen that day to go into the holy of
holies. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t really feel like going. He
didn’t feel pious or worthy of that task today. But yet he had been chosen, and
what an honor it was. And so with dignified solemnity he entered the holy of
holies to present his sacrifice to God.
It never entered his mind that this would be
the day God would show up; The day that God would break into the narrative of
his life with news that would change his world and Israel’s future at the same
time. Zechariah never imagined that God’s delay was His great provision. He
would never have dared to hope that the child he so longed for would be the
child who would prepare the hearts of God’s people for the Messiah. He could
never have guessed that the years of silence would break into an angelic
announcement of a child consecrated to God from the womb.
It never occurred to Zechariah when he went
to give the yearly sacrifice that God had delayed his answer to him until that moment because it was a message for
all of Israel. Did he realize in the months of silent waiting, after the
angel’s visitation, that maybe, just maybe, God showed up then because He was answering in a way that worked out the prayers
for the one as provision for the many? Did it occur to him during his hours of
mute silence that maybe the years of silence were not God’s neglect of his
prayers? They were but a dramatic pause in the symphony of His grace.
And so he did what most of us would do in
that situation. He doubted. Even in the presence of an angel, he doubted. The
years of crying out with only a silent reply and with no reward for faithful
living had hardened his heart just a little. At some point he had resigned
himself to serving God, even if he had to close his heart to Him just a little
to do it; even if He was a God wouldn’t condescend into his personal pain and
longing. And so when the glorious news arrived, it was a little too grand, a
bit too glorious, and far too hopeful to embrace with all his hope.
So God in His ironic sense of humor gave him
as his confirmation--- as the sign he asked for-- the very thing that had
broken his hope: silence. But this time, he knew God had spoken. And this time
as he waited, slowly because of the silence, he began to hope again.
If for no other reason, this story needs to
be told and retold because it reminds us of one enduring truth we must never
forget: God alone is the supreme author. He answers the deepest heart of our
surface prayers. He calls forth the brightest hope from the deepest darkness of
our longings. The problem is, we give up on Him long before He has finished His
work in us. We write Him off long before He has written our ending. He is far
more patient in crafting the beauty of our lives than we are in imagining it.
We read the Scriptures simply for this: we
must see more clearly this God that we serve in all His compassionate beauty.
We must be reminded in the midst of our story that God shows up sometimes long
after our hopes have grown cold. And He gets to. I am not the director of His
movie, and I forget that, when I use my prayers to give Him His cue to enter
stage left.
Oh to let the beauty of Scripture sink in so
that when I enter into prayer again, I enter with quiet surrendered hope. Not
hope because I know when He will enter,
or how He will enter; But with deep
conviction that He will. And when He does, the gloriousness of His appearing
will leave me speechless just like Zechariah.
Oh Father, may we surrender with deep
assurance our deepest desires to you,, knowing that your mercy reaches to the
skies. May we learn to trust when the silence falls for way too long, that it
is ever only a pause in your attentive answer to us. May we fall with frail hope upon the grace
that you pour out upon us daily. Grace that gives us wings to soar when we are
weary even of our hopes. Let us like Zechariah finally offer our faith onto the
altar of patient waiting that we might see once again, Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How
unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable His ways! I surrender all
to your far better, far more glorious plan, this day, O Christ. For from him and through him and to him are
all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11: 33-36) (ESV).
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