Read Luke 1:18-20
IT IS TEMPTING to dismiss Zechariah as a fool for doubting Gabriel. After all, if a visitation from an archangel is possible, why not a miraculous pregnancy? Surely Zechariah, being a priest, knew the story of Abraham and Sarah, who also bore a son in their old age. But we know that logic can become puny in the face of deep disappointment or pain—and in Zechariah’s case, the pain ran decades deep.
“Your prayer has been heard,” the angel told him—a prayer he surely quit long ago, when the last hope for children disappeared with Elizabeth’s fertility (Luke 1:13). After that, Zechariah must have resigned himself to his reality: He was childless, and always would be. That an angel had just blasted through the roof of that reality did not dispel it completely. After so many years of heartache, Zechariah had trouble believing.
Some time ago, my husband and I experienced a miscarriage. When we became pregnant again a few months later, I struggled with dread every day. Every time I felt a twinge, I was terrified it was a harbinger of something worse—stabbing pain, a gush of blood, unstoppable, irreversible loss. I found it difficult, almost impossible, to believe I was actually going to have a baby. One afternoon, as I sat on the couch, battered by wave upon wave of anxiety, I asked God for a clear sign the pregnancy would be successful. If this baby will be born healthy, let someone knock on our door right now. But even as I prayed, I knew no sign could take away my anxiety. The experience of loss was still too keen. If I’d seen an actual angel—who knows? But I’ve never waited for anything as long as Zechariah had.
To Zechariah, Gabriel said, “And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words” (v. 20). Later, we are told Zechariah was struck deaf as well (v. 62). This sounds like a punishment. To be rendered suddenly without hearing or speech is to be isolated from others, forced into solitude—as Henri Nouwen writes in The Way of the Heart, “Silence completes and intensifies solitude.” Yet Scripture does not present solitude and silence as punishments, but as invitations.
Solitude, writes Nouwen, is “the furnace of transformation.” In the silence, stripped of worldly props and scaffolds, we are forced to confront our own “frightening nothingness.” It is this excruciating vulnerability that becomes the doorway to God’s presence, to the place where we surrender to his love. This is the solitude that Zechariah, through silence, was compelled to enter—the solitude of Moses’ 40 years in the desert, and of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.
With no distraction from his doubt—and no way to voice it, either—all that was left for Zechariah to do was listen. In the silence, God spoke to him again, and this time, he believed. When Zechariah finally spoke months later, it was to prophesy about the Messiah, in a song bursting with wonder, faith, and love. In the silence, Zechariah was transformed from a man of resignation to a man full of hope.
Silence, waiting, the relinquishing of control—these are painful experiences before they are life-giving ones. But the promise of the gospel is that someday life will come. Until then, we wait—like Zechariah, like Elizabeth—for the promises of God to be made manifest. Help us, Lord, to surrender to you in the silence and waiting, so that we too may be transformed.
Christina Ho is the author of the audio series “The Last Two Years” and the cofounder of Estuaries.
This article is part of A Time for Wonder, a 4-week devotional to help individuals, small groups, and families journey through the 2024 Advent season. Learn more about this special issue that can be used Advent, or any time of year at http://orderct.com/advent.
