Read: Luke 1:5-23
The first person we meet in Luke’s Christmas story is Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. We meet Zechariah when he is an old man and learn that he and his wife Elizabeth are unable to have children. On the day that he is serving in the temple, however, he gets a message from God that his wife is pregnant with a son.
Whoa – what is his response?
Maybe a, “wow!” Or “no way!” Or “Thank you God!”
Nope. Check out his reaction “how can I be sure this will happen?” Not very enthusiastic. In modern English, it would be something like, “Wait, what? Yeah, that’s not gonna work.”
What Zechariah doesn’t get is that he’s talking to God and God seems to like working in situations that seem impossible. He has this thing for something called ‘faith’ – trusting in Him even though you can’t see how it works in the end.
Instead of ‘wow,’ Zechariah is stuck on the ‘how?’
How is that going to work?
Zechariah doesn’t need reminding about how babies are made. That would be weird. He’s not really asking “how?” He’s making a statement about how it can’t work (which is the opposite of faith).
Sound familiar?
- How will I get enough hours to afford Christmas?
- Thanksgiving was a mess; how will everyone get along at Christmas?
It’s okay to question how God is going to do something, but we have to make sure it is a question. Too often “how?” becomes a statement of disbelief rather than trust. Remember yesterday’s word: abiding. Don’t get caught up in the how, all you and I need to do is be obedient to what we know right now.