Feeling Like Zechariah

I prepared a Sunday school lesson that I never got to teach. I lost my voice. The ironic part is that the lesson was about Zechariah.

Zechariah faithfully served God in the temple, but he yearned for that one gift God hadn’t given him – a son. The angel Gabriel appeared to him and said his prayer was heard. His wife would have a son. But Zechariah, like so many of us, argued with God. “This can’t be,” he said. “We’re too old.” Since Zechariah didn’t believe, he lost his voice. He couldn’t speak for nine months until his son was born.

Someone else in the Christmas story was silent even longer. That Someone was God. When the ink dried on Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, God chose silence for 400 years. Why? We don’t know. Maybe He realized that we weren’t ready for what He had to say.

Our God is patient. He waited. And waited. And when the time was right, He didn’t shout from afar. He sent His Son to earth. The Word became flesh.

I’m frustrated with my inability to speak right now. I would love to have my voice back for Christmas. I wonder if God was frustrated with His silence, longing for the day when we would be ready to hear Him.

Are you troubled by the silence of God this Christmas? Has He withheld the one thing you yearn for? Take comfort in the Christmas story. God is still there. His heart longs for you; and when the time is right, He will break His silence.

The Gift Certainty

The “holly, jolly” is missing in my Christmas this year. My friend’s daughter died in a car accident last week. In the midst of tragedy, jingle bells, lights and Christmas cookies don’t mean much. But God’s story of Christmas offers comfort to my soul.

This Christmas, I am clinging to Luke’s preface to the Christmas story, those verses we don’t usually read. “It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed” (Luke 1:3-4 NKJV).

Many today think that we cannot know with certainty what happens after death. I disagree. We can know because Christianity is not a moral philosophy or a theory about spirituality. It is a statement that certain things happened at a certain time in a certain place. These are facts that can be checked.

Either Jesus lived, died and rose again like the Bible says; or He did not. If He did, we can be certain about life after death. “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19 NKJV). If He did not, Christianity is worthless.

My purpose today is not to blog about the amazing historic accuracy of Luke’s gospel. Others have done that. (Click here for one site.) I’m just saying that I’m glad for Christmas because God took on flesh and entered the world so that I can be certain there is life beyond this world.

When I tell my friend that her daughter is happy in heaven, I’m not engaging in wishful thinking. I am speaking the truth with a capital T.

Flip-flops and Thanksgiving

A friend of mine gave me flip-flops this summer. They fit well. They’re comfortable. I love the pattern on them with its splashes of red. But that's not why I love the flip-flops. I love them because Mariana gave them to me. It’s not the what. It’s the who.

This Thanksgiving as we list what we’re thankful for, let’s remember whom we are thanking. I don’t need these things around me to be happy, but my life would be empty without the God who gave me the things.