The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas (17 page)

Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous in God’s eyes, careful to obey all of the Lord’s commandments and regulations. They had no children because Elizabeth was unable to conceive, and they were both very old.

One day Zechariah was serving God in the Temple, for his order was on duty that week. As was the custom of the priests, he was chosen by lot to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and burn incense. While the incense was being burned, a great crowd stood outside, praying.

While Zechariah was in the sanctuary, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the incense altar. Zechariah was shaken and overwhelmed with fear when he saw him. But the angel said, “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah! God has heard your prayer. Your wife, Elizabeth, will give you a son, and you are to name him John. You will have great joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the eyes of the Lord. He must never touch wine or other alcoholic drinks. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. And he will turn many Israelites to the Lord their God. He
will be a man with the spirit and power of Elijah. He will prepare the people for the coming of the Lord. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and he will cause those who are rebellious to accept the wisdom of the godly.”

LUKE 1:6-17

It’s the time when all the miracles begin.

God has been silent for four hundred years.

After He spoke to the prophet Malachi, the Old Testament falls mute. It’s been four long, neck-straining centuries where you could look up to heaven . . . and hear a pin drop.

Tears drop.

No one has glimpsed an angel for at least half a millennium. It has been six hundred years since Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego cut through the flames of the furnace with a fourth blinding torch from heaven. Eight hundred years have slow-dripped by since Elijah and Elisha and that bygone era of miracles. When we’re blind to grace, is the miracle we get that we get homesick for Him?

Then, in a prayer and a blink, four hundred years shatter. The volume of God reverberates in hearts, and the strobes of heaven dance.

Angel glory appears in front of one old man. A certain wrinkled and graying priest. Not a particularly notable one —just one of a sea of eighteen thousand. One priest who’s awestruck that his name has been drawn to offer the incense in the Holy of Holies on the once-a-year Day of Atonement. Throughout the whole of a priest’s life, his name might never be drawn. And once it was, it could never be drawn again.

Zechariah breathes through the miracle of his priesthood —one man named “God Remembers,” an undistinguished old man without a son to pass down the priesthood, married to one time-engraved woman named “My God Is an Oath.” A woman ashamed and disgraced at the barrenness of oaths. God bends His heart to hear the prayer of the breaking —the remembering God of the small and the forgotten —and miracles begin again here.

Miracles begin understated. They begin, and the earth doesn’t shake and trumpets don’t sound. Miracles begin with the plainsong of a promise —and sometimes not even fully believed. This is always the best place for miracles: God meets us right where we don’t believe. When our believing runs out, God’s loving runs on.

This is the season of the Advent of God. The barren will birth. Dreams will wake into reality. Nothing is impossible with God.

That’s what the angel plainly assures: “God Remembers” and “My God Is an Oath” will birth “God Is Gracious.” The miracle always is that God is gracious, that grace carries us and breathes life into the dead and impossible places, that grace —a thousand graces —explodes the doubting silence in our hearts.

Zechariah has doubt. He struggles with the doubts, can’t
silence the questions. Not unlike Mary, with doubts and questions of her own. Yet Zechariah finds himself struck dumb —and Mary finds herself God-struck with blessings.

There is this. Never doubt that there are two kinds of doubt: one that fully lives into the questions, and one that uses the questions as weapons against fully living.

Breathe easy into the questions. The name of God,
YHWH
 —inhale, exhale —is the sound of your breathing. There is your miraculous answer. As long as you are breathing, He is always your miraculous answer.

The angel breathes a word from the Lord about the front-runner of the Lord: “He will be a man with the spirit and power of Elijah.” The era of miracles is here! “He will prepare the people for the coming of the Lord.”

And
He
will prepare your heart for the coming of the Lord. Now the miracles stack, multiply. You don’t have to work for the coming of the Lord —you don’t have to work for Christmas.
The miracle is always that God is gracious.
You don’t have to earn Christmas, you don’t have to perform Christmas, you don’t have to make Christmas. You can rest in Christ. You can wait with Christ. You can breathe easy in Christ. Open your heart to the miracle of grace.
He
will prepare your heart for the coming of the Lord.

“This is the true preparedness of heart for coming to Christ, the preparedness of coming to him just as you are,” Charles Spurgeon wrote.
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Your name has been drawn. Come to Him just as you are. Give up trying to be self-made: this is your gift to Him —and His gift to you.
Simply come.
The miracle of Christmas is that you get more than proof of God’s existence. You get the experience of God’s presence.

You always get your Christmas miracle. You get God with you.

God gives God. He withholds no good thing from you.

And the good things in life are not so much health, but holiness; not so much riches in this world, but relationship with God; not so much our plans, but His presence —and He withholds no good thing from us because the greatest things aren’t ever
things
.

He doesn’t withhold Jesus from you. Christ is all your good, and He is all yours, and this is always all your miracle.

No matter the barrenness you feel, you can always have as much of Jesus as you want.

Quietly, without drawing attention or fanfare, do something kind and gracious for someone in your home today.

God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

During what seasons of your life has God seemed most silent? Looking back, can you hear the quiet echoes of Him speaking, even during those times?

How have you sensed God’s presence —His glory sparks —around you lately?

Spend time basking in God’s presence, asking Him to fill your barren places with more of Himself.

Prepare the way for the LORD’s coming!

MATTHEW 3:3

In those days John the Baptist came to the Judean wilderness and began preaching. His message was, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” The prophet Isaiah was speaking about John when he said,

     “He is a voice shouting in the wilderness,

     ‘Prepare the way for the LORD’s coming!

          Clear the road for him!’”

MATTHEW 3:1-3

The Advent road cusps.

The glow of Christmas breaches over the horizon. Everywhere, the lights signal. The music, the music drifting in —harbingers of the King.

And if you listen, linger and listen, you can hear the forerunner, John the Baptist:
The King is coming, the Lord is coming.

The King’s herald is calling His coming, calling for the clearing of the road.

You have felt that road —how it can twist, right there in your gut. Expectations can ride like highwaymen, ransacking joy, killing relationships.

Performance bandits can choke mercilessly at the jugular, steal the riches of His grace.

The herald of the King calls to you in this moment to come away from the crush and the crowds, to come away to a space of stillness to be ready for the coming of the Lord.

In the wilderness there are few roads, so Christ is the only Way.

Rest here.

The wilderness offers you grace: we are most prepared for Christ, for Christmas, when we confess we are mostly not prepared.
Rest here.
There is only room in us when we are done with us.

There is no shame in trembling a bit at the drawing near of His coming. When you have a visitation from a holy God who breathes out stars beyond our galaxy and is white-flame purity, holy awe is apt. Walk barefoot a bit through your last days of Advent. We are sinners before a holy God. But the holy God who comes is your saving God, your rescuing God, your weight-carrying God, the Shekinah glory who always splits the blackness and unleashes captives free. “God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love,” writes Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “God makes us happy, as only children can be happy.”
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