Waiting For Jesus: Elizabeth Series

“But - but - “ I stammered. “That’s what the prophet Malachi said about the return of Elijah! How can this be?”

Zechariah said, “I do not know why we were chosen, Elizabeth, but it is true. We must believe. I asked for a sign that this would happen, and the angel struck me dumb. I will not doubt again.” I was filled with wonder, and knew it must be so. “We will give him to the Lord’s service, as Hannah did with her son Samuel,” I said. And Zechariah nodded soberly. “The angel told me our son must swear as the Nazirites do,” he said, “and never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. [Lk 1:13-16]

“My disgrace has been taken away,” I thought, and didn’t realize I had spoken aloud until Zechariah embraced me again, and wrote that in his eyes I had always been the best wife he could have hoped for.

Within a few weeks my body knew what my heart and mind already believed. I had been blessed as Sarah had been, and my child would serve the Most High. And so I repented of having lost hope, in the days before the miracle. After all, Zechariah and I had only been waiting forty years for a child. Israel had been waiting over 400! And yet we knew that God’s Messiah would come, didn’t we? Why had I doubted God’s goodness? Not that God had promised me a child, no, I didn’t mean that. But I knew that God never abandons his people, even if our prayers aren’t answered in the usual way. Didn’t he give Naomi a child for her old age, even though she did not bear it herself? Didn’t he say, "Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in travail!”? [Is 54:1]

And I thought about how easy it is to lose hope. It’s not that I had been angry at God, or think that he had been unfair not to grant me my heart’s desire. It’s just that I stopped looking forward, as if without a child there was no future. I had been going about my days as if they had no meaning, because I could not imagine a future. Or, to be more accurate, I had imagined an empty future. But there is always a future, just as there is always a present. The future is only empty of hope if we leave the grace of God out of the picture. It was while Zechariah had been going about the ordinary - privileged, as I said before, but ordinary - business of serving the Lord that the angel appeared. He didn’t expect it, I didn’t expect it. But nothing is impossible with God, even hope for a barren old woman. And I think hope always looks like a baby, even when it isn’t your own.

That’s why, when my young cousin Mary came to visit, it was possible for me to believe what had happened to her. I was in my sixth month when she arrived at my door. And little John gave a mighty kick that nearly knocked the breath out of me and I knew, I just knew that Mary was pregnant, too. Not only pregnant, but carrying the child my John had been sent to prepare the way for. I didn’t know whether to fall to my knees or throw my arms around her. And so I just cried out, “What brings the mother of the Messiah to my door?” Mary stood there in the doorway, surrounded by the early morning sunlight, and said, “The angel told me that you, too, had been blessed by God. I wanted to rejoice with you.”